The Water

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by The God, Mar 9, 2017.

  1. The God Valued Senior Member

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    Water is life.

    Due to certain chemistry related phenomenon water has maximum density at around 4 Deg C. The solid water (ice) density increases on heating. This peculiar property of water (solid density less than liquid) is the matter of life over death for marine creatures and plantations.

    Science has a valid explanation for this but the point;- Is it a mere coincidence or is it a part of some grand design?
     
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  3. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Neither. It's a fact. Life can only arise where it is possible to arise. The properties of water make certain kinds of life possible in certain places.
     
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  5. Oystein Registered Senior Member

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    Do I detect the beginnings of an intelligent design argument?

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  7. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

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    I predict the imminent arrival of wellwisher to expound on the sacredness of all things water...
     
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  8. Kristoffer Giant Hyrax Valued Senior Member

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    More entertaining than the whole left side of brains, right side of brains, liberals are idiots etc. that's for sure.
     
  9. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Expect a garbled treatise on hydrogen bonding and entropy....... with a sprinking of liberals....
     
  10. The God Valued Senior Member

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    No reference to scientific cause is required. Hydrogen bonding etc is fine. The point is, is it just a coincidence? Do we know of any other compound wherein density of solid is less than that of liquid?
     
  11. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    It is probably not a mere coincidence that water is the solvent in which terrestrial life arose. It certainly has a umber of unusual properties that suit it for the job: it is good polar solvent, for a wide range of chemical substances with an unusually wide liquid range at terrestrial atmospheric pressure. There are not that many simple substances that are liquid at the temperatures at which long carbon chains are both stable and energetic enough to react at a decent rate.

    However I do not immediately see what you are driving at, concerning the tendency of ice to float. Is it that forming a floating layer when it gets cold insulates the water beneath and slows down the rate of freezing lower in the water column? So if the Earth went through a cold phase, life could continue at depth even if the top surface were to cold to support it - is that your point?
     
  12. The God Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, if it was not so, the marine life would vanish.
     
  13. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    I observe you think about things so I ask what are you thinking here.
    I cant imagine you made this post with out an opinion of your own so are you prepared to go further and let us know your beliefs here.
    Alex
     
  14. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Yes there are a few.This (rather interesting) Wiki article on Bismuth mentions that quite a few semi-metals above Bismuth, along the metal/non-metal diagonal in the Periodic Table, have this property. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth

    Among compounds, I found a reference to acetic acid also expanding on freezing, though have not been able to substantiate this further. If it does, I would expect this to be for a similar reason as with water - the energy reduction by forming a strong network of hydrogen bonds exceeds the reduction due to maximising simple van der Waals attraction.
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2017
  15. The God Valued Senior Member

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    Life is here because nature provided the just platform for life to evolve? See around and list out what all is needed for life to originate and sustain. You will be surprised at the enormity of this. So I started with the basic, the water. I expect to take it forward to possibility of life somewhere else.
     
  16. The God Valued Senior Member

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    Thanks. Yes if it is acetic acid, then it shd be hydrogen bonding again.
     
  17. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    If you look at the two atoms of water; H and O, these are the first and third most abundant atoms of the universe. These atoms are also number one and two in terms of abundance of the most reactive elements.

    Hydrogen H2 and H2O are the two most abundant molecules in the universe. While the chemical potential between H2 and H2O, is the energy bandwidth for life. All the reduced organics of life define energy within the middle of this range. Water is not coincidence for life, but based on natural design.

    Hydrogen is part of the original material of the universe. The hydrogen of water, has never gone though nuclear fusion and mass burn. Therefore these hydrogen atoms contain more potential energy within their nucleus that any other atom; based on weight. If we could fuse hydrogen, we could release this potential energy. The hydrogen carry this with them in water.

    Oxygen, on the other hand, is the eighth element on the periodic table, yet it is the third most abundant element, behind only hydrogen and helium. The reason it is more abundant than all lower atoms on the periodic table, like carbon and nitrogen, which have to build first, is the oxygen atom has unusual stability.

    The net affect is water is composed of two unique atoms, one of highest energy and the other of very high atomic stability. This allows for the unique properties of water, such as a maximum density at 4C and therefore the ability to expand, whether you heat water or cool water from 4C. It also allows water to add something extra, allowing life. The hydrogen of water can self ionize to form pH. Again, oxygen is very stable and hydrogen is very energized.

    Carbon and nitrogen are not as stable as oxygen, and both contain more energy potential. Oxygen will pull electrons away from these. Organic solvents don't have the same parameters as water, but tend to form a potential wth water and less potential with organics. The higher potential of water, relative to organic solvents, is needed to phase separate the organelles of life; water/oil affect.

    The extreme parameters of water are also needed to add more variety to the organics of life. For example, there are more protein conformations; shapes, in water, than in any other solvent. It has to due with the higher atomic potential of water.
     
  18. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    DING! DING !DING ! We have a winner.

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  19. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    I don't usually respond to Wellwisher, but I would just point out for any other readers that the chemical properties of water, which are important to its role in terrestrial life, have nothing to do with the nuclear potential energy of the proton that forms its nucleus. Muddling up chemistry with nuclear physics in this way is extremely unhelpful to anybody's understanding.
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2017
  20. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    'Life' is very imprecisely defined. But however we define it, it's a hugely complicated self-replicating process, not a single chemical molecule.

    If you said that water is necessary and fundamental to life as we understand it here on Earth, then I'd agree.

    Since I'm inclined to define 'life' functionally, I'm not convinced that there's only one single way that similar functions can come about. I'd hypothesize that there might be evolving self-replicating things elsewhere in the universe with biochemistries dramatically different than what we are used to here on Earth.

    It's possible. I can't exclude the possibility that it's all the result of design, but I don't see any convincing reason to believe that it is.

    Similar questions could be asked about anything that happens, about any result that's dependent on prior conditions. Anything that comes about as the result of a long and complicated history will be dependent on a whole lot of prior events and conditions that brought about what we see today. And a lot of that will appear rather fortuitous.

    It's certainly possible to imagine the history of the universe in literary terms, possessing what we would call a 'plot' if the events in the universe were analogous to events in a novel.

    That's what we mean when we talk about thinking in mythic terms. Ancient myths were people expressing the kind of ideas that today we would call 'philosophy' and 'science' in the form of stories. (Things like cosmogonies.) I can imagine them first appearing around paleolithic campfires many tens of thousands of years ago. Myths aren't crude and stupid as modern prejudice has it, they are fundamentally human and can sometimes be hugely sophisticated. But since they are expressed in the form of stories, the characters in the stories typically are personified and the stories possess plots, form and purposeful structure.

    I still think that there's a human psychological tendency to think in that way and for people to want the events around them to be part of some larger narrative and plot structure.
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2017
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  21. The God Valued Senior Member

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    "If you said that water is necessary and fundamental to life as we understand it here on Earth, then I'd agree....."

    Yes, this is what I meant. I thought my short statement would convey that.
     
  22. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    When it comes to apologizing (should they ever feel the need) for any cosmic fine-tuning and preferential appearance for life having the capacity to arise....Then those who believe in presentism (or apparently also possibilism), could recruit anything from a multiverse of varying regulatory principles to an endless universe with physical constants that perversely[*] differ along its vast tracts.

    Whereas those who believe in eternalism perhaps don't have to offer any reason when exposed to the sentiment, since even "design" on the part of human, artificial endeavors (much less gods) could be technically dismissed. (Which is to say, the temporal components of the world's history and civilized developments would have always co-existed rather than being the products of a process winking changes in and out of being, or adding such changes to a growing block of the past, as in possibilism).

    - - - - - - -

    [*] "Perverse" in semantic respect to the universality which the concept itself normally features as a property.

    - - - - - - -

    Additional: Being and Becoming In Modern Physics
     
  23. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    Nature didn't "provide" anything. Nature just is what it is. Life is a property of nature, an inescapable offshoot. If nature was different there might be something different that qualified as "life".
     

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