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| Ganymede |
To read a creationist disinformation site, you'd think Earth was the only body in the Solar System - the entire Universe even - to have water, and that the only explanation for how it all got there must be that a magic man magicked it all.
Take this piece of scientific illiteracy and Bible babble, or this attempt to mislead their victims by Creation Misinstries International about the discovery that there is a lot of water bound up in hydrated minerals in Earth's mantle - a false claim that was so easy to predict at the time.
Clearly, creationists pseudoscientist frauds would like their dupes to believe that the presence of water on Earth is some sort of scientific mystery; a miracle - another gap in which to sit their god and explain with "God did it!" Water is, of course, essential for life on Earth and life almost certainly evolved in it. It's important to Creationism Inc. therefore that this water must be presented as all part of their god's divine plan, and evidence of its special creation of Earth, in line with the pre-scientific gibberish in the Bible
So these unfortunate creationists must be devastated to learn that water must have been abundant in the forming Solar System, because it's turning out that just about every body large enough to have enough gravity to keep its water and not too hot so it all evaporates away into space, has lots of water, even more than Earth does in some cases.
So far, water has been confirmed on the Solar System's largest moon, Ganymede, which orbits Jupiter. This has far more water than does Earth. Ganymede now joins another of Jupiter's moons, Europa, and two moons of Saturn, Titan and Enceladus, as known wet bodies in the Solar System, and so is another candidate for extraterrestrial life. We have very strong evidence that Mars might once have had liquid water on its surface and even the largest asteroid, Ceres might well hold water. We also know now that comets consist mostly of rocks bound up in water ice. The presence of water on Mars and Ceres also gives the lie to the claim that water should not be found on the inner planets.
This water formed in the original accretion disk produced when the collapsing cloud of hydrogen and stardust switch on it nuclear fusion reactor and flung out the heavier elements in the early stages of the solar system's formation. There is no mystery in this and the abundance of this water makes its presence on Earth an entirely unremarkable thing. The surprise would have been if there been none - but then we wouldn't be trying to help creationists understand this basic science and joined up logic thing.
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