Where did Earth’s water come from?

You know that the water that you drink does not come from a lake or river, well not directly. Before making its way to the lake and river, water has rather been through a journey composed of chaos and cosmic. Interesting isn’t it? So learn how water travelled and reached earth to satisfy your thirst. In this article, we will walk you through the process and will give our best to make you understand it in a simpler form.

Contents

Contents Of Water

Water is tasteless, colorless, does not smell and is transparent. 70% of earth abruptly consists of water and that’s not even the cool part. A body of a human being itself is 60%water. Fascinating, isn’t it? A water molecule consists of two basic parts- hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen is the simplest of all elements and other than that oxygen came into play after approx seven hundred million years.

Nucleosynthesis

Oxygen entered the scene only after the stars were done forming. The insane pressure at the centre of these infernos was crazy that led the atoms of hydrogen to fuse together which in turn drove to the formation of helium. After that, heliums fused and fused and formed heavier elements for instance beryllium, carbon and hence oxygen in that process known as nucleosynthesis.

Effects of supernovas

The moment stars exposed and caused supernovas, the brand new elements scattered across the universe, literally. After they were scattered, a combination took place famously known as H2O. The dusty cloud that developed in our solar system when it collided with our very planet earth was composed of those water molecules.

Outgassing

Outgassing is a process where the earth’s core, composed of molten rocks, releases sort of volcanic gasses to the surface. A theory that scientists have established is that, after the rock was formed a very small amount of water existed on earth. Back then, the high temperature and no presence of atmosphere might have caused the water to evaporate. This very process created a layer that trapped the water that was seeking for an escape through evaporation.

What leads to an abundant supply of water?

According to scientists, it was caused by so-called ice-bearing comets or in a more specific manner, it can be plainly explained as some asteroids that bombarded the earth over millions of years.

Challenging the above theory

The meteorites that built just after the formation of our solar system were examined. It was discovered by our scientists that meteorites, besides containing water, bear chemical compositions that collaborate with the rocks present on our very earth and samples from an asteroid. The formation of this asteroid took place at the same time as our planet. This thus signifies that there are chances of earth accumulating water even before the formation of the atmosphere and that the rest abundant water was brought to us by asteroids. This, however, is a suspicion of our scientists.