The Ice Bucket Challenge

Everyone is doing the Ice Bucket Challenge, and ALS has reaped benefits because of it. Someday the disease will be wiped out like polio and smallpox.

I personally did not dump water and ice cubes on my head. Instead, I used my head to think about it.

How often do water and ice appear together in nature?

Really? You ask.

This question may sound ridiculous, until one thinks about how big nature is. Actually the answer is: very rarely.

Here on earth water exists in three different states: liquid water, ice and vapor. Our solar system is in the Goldielocks Zone, which is where water can take on all three states of matter. A planet closer to the sun has no ice. Any planet on the other side of the Goldielocks Zone will have ice, maybe even with liquid water under the ice, but clouds of water vapor cannot exist in these areas.

Water is everywhere in the universe.

There is a moon called Titan, in the orbit of Saturn, where ice is as solid as rock is here on earth. Neither liquid water nor vapor,exist on Titan. But liquid methane prevails, creating lakes, rivers and clouds, just like good old H20 does here on earth.

Try dumping a bucket of liquid methane on your head, forget the methane cubes.