A Snowball's Chance in Heaven

As I mentioned in a past blog or two, I live just outside of LA, at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains. Now LA is not known for its high mountains with deep snow but every year as a family we would drive up to Big Bear or Wrightwood at least once to rock and roll in the fluffy white stuff. All kids seem to love the snow and we have five. They would sled down the hills on cardboard or make snow angels. And of course there would be a snowball fight or two (or three, I have three boys!). It was always a blast. Now if we enjoy snowball fights that much, might God not also enjoy His creation in the same way? He could and He does. Comets are just giant snowballs hurled around the stars at the hand of God.

Comets are often popularly called "dirty snowballs", consisting mainly of water ice (NASA says at least 85%), other frozen gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia, rocks, and dust. Recently it has been shown that they can have dry, dusty or rocky surfaces, suggesting that the ices are hidden beneath the nuclear crust. Comets can orbit the large planets but most orbit the Sun. Many of the orbits are large parabolic ellipses passing close to the Sun at one end. It is while orbiting close to the Sun that the comet out-gasses the water ice and other frozen compounds, forming the coma and tail.

Philipp Salzgeber
As a comet approaches the Sun, solar radiation causes the volatile ices within the comet nucleus to vaporize and stream out, carrying dust away with them. These streams of dust and gas form a coma, a huge and extremely fragile atmosphere, around the comet nucleus. Then the Sun's radiation and solar wind blow this atmosphere into an enormous tail that stretches far out from the comet body and always points away from the Sun. Both the coma and tail are illuminated by the Sun and may become visible as the comet nears the Earth, the dust reflecting sunlight directly and the gases glowing from ionization.

The comets are not the only locale for water within the Solar System. Water exists on other planetary bodies as well. Water vapor is found in the atmosphere on:

* Mercury - 3.4%
* Venus - 0.002%
* Mars - 0.03%
* Jupiter - 0.0004%
* Enceladus (a moon of Saturn) - 91%

Liquid water is present just under the surface of Enceladus and is also found on Europa (a moon of Jupiter). Water ice is found on:

* Mars - in the polar ice caps
* Europa
* Titan (a moon of Saturn)
* Enceladus
* And even under the crust of our very own Moon

Ice is probably also part of the internal structure of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Evidence of water on other planets is critical to the possible discovery of life outside of our small blue sphere.

The existence of water on Earth is vital to the existence of life, as we know it. The Earth is located in the habitable zone of the Solar System; if it were slightly closer to or further from the Sun the conditions which allow the three phases of water to be present simultaneously would be far less likely to exist. Earth's mass allows sufficient gravity to hold an atmosphere. Water vapor and carbon dioxide held in the atmosphere provide a greenhouse effect that contributes to maintaining a relatively steady surface temperature. If the Earth were smaller, the resulting thinner atmosphere would cause temperature extremes preventing water accumulation except in polar ice caps (as on Mars). If the Earth were larger, the water on it could be solid even at high temperatures, because of the high pressures caused by increased gravitational forces.

Our World truly is in a unique spot in the Solar System, if not the Universe, to retain water in equilibrium and thus is the premier candidate for the presence of life.

Deuteronomy 10:14 "Indeed heaven and the highest heavens belong to the LORD your God, and the earth with all that is in it. (NKJV)"