Salt Water in Meteorites and Comets

An obvious corollary of the eph, never explicitly put in writing in so many words, is that water in fragments from exploded terrestrial-type planets will be salt water. If meteorites come from the explosion of planet-sized bodies, the water from such bodies can be ocean water (as on Earth and as suspected for Jupiter’s moon Europa), and would therefore be expected to contain salt from run-off of minerals from solid portions of the planet. Only recently has meteorite water been tested for salt content for the first time, with the surprising result (for mainstream models) that sodium chloride was found. [[13]] Certain aspects of this discovery suggest that water was flowing on the parent body from which the meteorite came. “The existence of a water-soluble salt in this meteorite is astonishing,” wrote R.N. Clayton of the University of Chicago in the reference cited. This is certainly true unless one had the exploded planet hypothesis in mind, in which case it would be unsurprising.

Supplementing the idea of salt water in meteorites, the eph does explicitly predict salt water in comets. [[14]] “In March, a long sodium tail was discovered in Comet Hale-Bopp. Aside from the general interest in this new type of comet tail, it was noted that the sodium ions have a half-life of just half a day, too short to survive a trip from the nucleus to the farthest parts of the tail. So the sodium must be conveyed as part of a parent molecule that is split by the solar wind into sodium and some other ions. The significance of this for comet models is that the exploded planet hypothesis says that comets originated in the explosion of a water-bearing planet. If that planetary water was salt water, as planetary oceans on Earth all tend to be, then water in comets would be salt water. The parent molecule for the salt escaping the comet’s coma into the tail would most likely be sodium chloride (salt), and the “other ions” would then be chlorine ions. The unknown parent molecule has not yet been officially discovered. But one can readily see that the discovery of chlorine in comets to go along with this discovery of sodium would make a strong case for the planetary origin scenario.”