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A comment on NASA’s Webb finds carbon source on surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Parent comment

Re:NASA’s Webb finds carbon source on surface of Jupiter’s m... by labster on Thursday September 21, 2023 @10:18PM (#37607115)
Point 1 above greatly understates the case. Water just sitting in a glass is constantly creating and destroying hydronium and hydroxide ions, and bare protons. Not to mention the carbon dioxide that gets dissolved as carbonic acid which can dissociate to bicarbonate.

On the other hand, its tough to talk about new water because under thermodynamics, all atoms of the same isotope at the same energy state are completely fungible, so it’s hard to say anything meaningful about the history of a molecule.

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Re:NASA’s Webb finds carbon source on surface of Jupiter’s m... by adonovan on Thursday September 21, 2023 @10:30PM (#37607172)
True, but even Feynman talks about "new photons" when describing scattering.
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Re:NASA’s Webb finds carbon source on surface of Jupiter’s m... by rcpt on Thursday September 21, 2023 @10:27PM (#37607153)
If a few water molecules are destroyed and replaced created over a long time then is it still the same glass of water?
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Re:NASA’s Webb finds carbon source on surface of Jupiter’s m... by mensetmanusman on Thursday September 21, 2023 @11:19PM (#37607427)
Nothing is ever the same at room temperature if you are counting atoms.
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Re:NASA’s Webb finds carbon source on surface of Jupiter’s m... by alex_young on Thursday September 21, 2023 @11:53PM (#37607632)
The famous glass of Theseus’ water eh? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
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Re:NASA’s Webb finds carbon source on surface of Jupiter’s m... by labster on Friday September 22, 2023 @06:08AM (#37610113)
Is the Glass of Theseus half-full or half-empty?
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Re:NASA’s Webb finds carbon source on surface of Jupiter’s m... by developer93 on Saturday September 23, 2023 @03:14AM (#37621249)
Twice as big as it needs to be
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