Return to 2nd Quarter 2026 articles.
My astronomy students were always amazed to learn that water exists in 22 different forms throughout the solar system. Water is unlike any other substance on Earth. A simple example is why a lake freezes with ice on top and liquid water underneath. When most substances cool, they become denser, but at 4°C (Celsius), water starts to violate that rule and becomes less dense. Because water is unlike any other substance, this behavior allows a lake to freeze on the surface while life continues under the ice.
Every elementary student knows that water can exist as vapor, liquid, or solid (ice). On Earth, water boils at 100°C when the air pressure is 100 kilopascals. (A Pascal is 1 Newton per square meter, and there are roughly 4.45 Newtons in a pound.) At the same air pressure, water freezes at 0°C. If you drop the air pressure to 100 Pascals, ice turns into water vapor, skipping the liquid phase altogether.
A point of interest to astronomers is that if the pressure is extreme — over 100 gigapascals — water will exist as ice regardless of the temperature. As space probes visit other planets and their moons, they measure temperatures. Not only do the temperatures tell us about these bodies, but the shapes of ice crystals on them can also reveal the conditions there. Natural water ice crystals on Earth are hexagonal, but scientists in the lab have forced ice crystals to take six different shapes. Depending on the temperature and pressure, they can be cubic, tetragonal, orthorhombic, rhombohedral, and monoclinic.
It has been said that the more we know about the creation, the closer we get to the Creator. The presence of water on other planets and their moons throughout the solar system enables the clockwork precision that allows Earth to endure for centuries with great stability. We learn about all of this through the facts of science discovered by human minds. Genesis 1:1 not only tells us that there was a beginning to time, space, and matter/energy, but we now know that the heavens includes God's miracle glue that holds it all together — water.
Picture credits:
© Olga Pylypenkor/Bigstock.com
© designuar/Bigstock.com
© Steve Collenderr/Bigstock.com
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europa_-_Perijove_45_(cropped).png
Scripture links/references are from BibleGateway.com. Unhighlighted scriptures can be looked up at their website.