Submitted by PHealthy t3_124xb33 in askscience
Seems like almost all instances of water in the galaxy, it is likely salt water but I really ask because I came across this article:
https://scitechdaily.com/alma-discovers-ordinary-table-salt-in-disk-surrounding-massive-star/
that's a lot of salt, yes?
Paaaaap t1_je1bq4r wrote
So the most common element is hydrogen, followed by helium and so on. Stars are basically fusion reactors that fuse element up untill iron on the periodic table. The Wikipedia page of " Abundance of the chemical elements " will show you how little of the universe is not hydrogen helium. So by mass I'd say it's quite rare for sure, but compared to things like gold or uranium it's far less rare. Most we can do are estimates since it's really hard to find direct evidence on far away planets.