WATER IN THE UNIVERSE

Water is a very common element in our Solar System and also in the universe, especially as ice and vapor.

It’s also a big part of the material which comets are made up of and recently, some important ice deposits have been discovered in the Moon, Europe (Saturn´s satellite) and Enceladus (Jupiter’s satellite).

Some of them have got possibly liquid water under their thick ice layer. This allows them to have got a kind of plate tectonics where the liquid water would represent the magma in the Earth and the ice would be similar to the Earth’s crust.

The biggest part of the water in the universe is thought to have been caused by stars formation that expelled the vapor after explode. The birth of stars usually causes a strong movement of gases and cosmic powder. When this material crashes into the gas from external areas, the shock waves caused because of it compress and make the gas get warm. Water is thought to be created inside this hot and dense gas.

Water was even detected in interstellar clouds inside our galaxy, The Milky Way. These interstellar clouds may condense in the shape of a solar nebula. It’s also thought that water may be abundant in other galaxies, because its components (hydrogen and oxygen) are ones of the most common elements in the universe.

However, it’s known that water, on its liquid state, only exists in the Earth (71% of its surface), in The Moon (in 2008, small quantities of water inside volcanic pearls were found and brought to the Earth by the “Apollo 15” expedition from 1971), and even, as I said before, in Enceladus (Saturn’s satellite) and in Europe (Jupiter’s satellite) there are signs of some possible liquid water.

Ana López Durán (1º “G” Bach)