Science magazine, the October 23 issue, arrived today (October 28). The up-front section, "This Week In Science," highlights an article about water that was detected on the moon by means of reflected sunlight in specific wavelengths. The amounts of water are tiny, and they are "variable" in a way that implies that the solar wind, which consists mostly of protons which are nuclei of hydrogen atoms is interacting with rock on the moon to make water. (The moon image is from NASA's APOD.)

To paraphrase: Recent infrared lunar mapping images reveal absorption signals for H2O and OH across much of the surface. Some variability in water abundance is seen over the course of the lunar day. The data imply that solar wind is depositing and/or somehow forming water and OH in minerals near the lunar surface.

The solar wind, which consists mostly of protons (i.e., hydrogen nuclei), blows against the moon's rocks at about a million mph. Oxygen atoms in the rocks must combining with the solar-wind protons to make hydroxyl ions, OH, and water molecules, H2O. Plausibly the heat of sunlight rapidly drives the water off the moon and into space, which might account for the "variability."

The total amount of such "sun-made water" on the moon is probably only a few grams at any given time, no more than a few thousand molecules per square centimeter or so. The water would come into being and then evaporate rapidly into space in the heat of the sun.

The solar wind must also create water on the earth, about a ton of it each day assuming that most of the portion of the solar wind that comes toward the earth gets directed into the atmosphere where the solar protons interact with oxygen atoms to make water. About a thousand tons of water molecules per day, each containing at least one hydrogen atom from the sun.

It follows that at any given moment there are hydrogen atoms in our bodies, maybe hundreds of them, that, as recently as a month ago, were part of the sun, and had been part of the sun for most of the past five-billion years.

Spaceweather.com lists the speed and density of the solar wind on its website everyday. The solar wind blows outwards from the sun at about a million miles an hour. It is a fast wind and a hot one, well over a million degrees, effectively a very hot flame blowing against the earth. But it is also a tenuous flame, one that acts slowly, but with time on its side. That unrelenting aspect of the solar wind would make it one of the challenges that will have to be faced as life from earth expands its range off the surface of the earth.

The speed and density data at spaceweather.com suggest that the solar wind carries some two-million tons of matter away from the sun each second, and presumably that has been happening for billions of years. The amount of power needed to heft two-million tons of matter to a million mph each second is more than 10-million times humanity's current energy use rate. The hot but tenuous solar wind trivializes humanity's earthly endeavor.

A thousand tons of water per day of water with hydrogen atoms from the sun works out to ~two-million cubic kilometers over the earth's history. It means that about 0.15 percent of the water on earth contains hydrogen atoms that were once part of the sun. It means that about 0.15 percent of the water in your body -- i.e., about 80 grams or 3 ounces -- contains hydrogen atoms that at one time in the earth's history, perhaps recent history as of the past year, were part of the sun. And the total mass of hydrogen atoms in your body that were once part of the sun is about four and a half grams, or roughly the mass of a nickel.

It's also possible, or at least plausible according to what the scientists tell us, some of the hydrogen atoms in your body at this moment had been part of the sun for briefer periods than the earth's history, like maybe only a few hundred million years, or even a few thousand years or even less than a year after having arrived in our part of the universe from . . . wherever they came from . . .

 

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