Washington, DC—Our planet's water could have originated from interactions between the hydrogen-rich atmospheres and magma oceans of the planetary embryos that comprised Earth's formative years, according to new work from Carnegie Science's Anat Shahar and UCLA's Edward Young and Hilke Schlichting.
Recent research suggests that water may have been first created less than 1 billion years after the big bang. This is thought to have taken place inside molecular gas clouds, which were nurseries for the second generation of stars. The big bang created hydrogen, helium and a tiny bit of lithium and beryllium.
Over millions of years, much of this water is recycled between the inner Earth, the oceans and rivers, and the atmosphere. This cycling process means that freshwater is constantly made available to Earth's surface where we all live.
Earth has vast oceans today, but our planet was a dry rock when it first formed — and water was a late addition, rained down in asteroids from the icy outer solar system.
"Our work suggests that the Earth and moon formed with about the same amounts of volatile elements as they have today," Borg said. "This does not mean that no water was added to Earth by comets and meteorites, but simply that the majority of water was inherited from the materials that Earth and moon formed from."
The same goes for deep-sea hydrothermal vents. These chimney-like vents form where seawater comes into contact with magma on the ocean floor, resulting in streams of superheated plumes. The microorganisms that live near such plumes have led some scientists to suggest them as the birthplaces of Earth's first life forms.
There exist numerous more or less mutually compatible hypotheses as to how water may have accu- mulated on the earth's surface over the past 4.6 billion years in sufficient quantity to form oceans.
Bottom line: New evidence from Harvard suggests that – a few billion years ago – Earth was a true water world, completely covered by a global ocean, with little if any visible land.
Water, water everywhere—and not a drop to drink. In 1972, scientists were astonished to see pictures from NASA's Mariner 9 mission as it circled Mars from orbit. The photos revealed a landscape full of riverbeds—evidence that the planet once had plenty of liquid water, even though it's dry as a bone today.
Yes, it is possible to make water. Water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. The process to combine hydrogen and oxygen is very dangerous though. Hydrogen is flammable and oxygen feeds flames, so the reaction to create water often results in an explosion.
Oil can last up to 50 years, natural gas up to 53 years, and coal up to 114 years. Yet, renewable energy is not popular enough, so emptying our reserves can speed up.
A special planet: the habitable Earth
It is the right distance from the Sun, it is protected from harmful solar radiation by its magnetic field, it is kept warm by an insulating atmosphere, and it has the right chemical ingredients for life, including water and carbon.
Some of the water molecules in your drinking glass were created more than 4.5 billion years ago, according to new research. That makes them older than the Earth, older than the solar system — even older than the sun itself.
The earliest life forms we know of were microscopic organisms (microbes) that left signals of their presence in rocks about 3.7 billion years old. The signals consisted of a type of carbon molecule that is produced by living things.
Scientists are exploring several possible locations for the origin of life, including tide pools and hot springs. However, recently some scientists have narrowed in on the hypothesis that life originated near a deep sea hydrothermal vent.
In Earth's Beginning
At first, it was extremely hot, to the point that the planet likely consisted almost entirely of molten magma. Over the course of a few hundred million years, the planet began to cool and oceans of liquid water formed.
Now, evidence is mounting that some 3 billion to 4 billion years ago, the planet's oceans held nearly twice as much water—enough to submerge today's continents above the peak of Mount Everest. The flood could have primed the engine of plate tectonics and made it more difficult for life to start on land.
The finding, published in Science, suggests that a reservoir of water is hidden in the Earth's mantle, more than 400 miles below the surface. Try to refrain from imagining expanses of underground seas: all this water, three times the volume of water on the surface, is trapped inside rocks.
Earth's Water Is Officially Older Than the Sun.
Did you know that the Earth has been recycling water for over 4 billion years? Every living thing on Earth needs water to survive and the water that we drink today is the same water that wooly mammoths, dinosaurs, and the first humans ever drank!
Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa are two examples. Both appear to have salty, liquid oceans covered with thick layers of ice at the surface. Scientists have observed water plumes erupting from Enceladus, and believe similar plumes can be found on Europa.
Earth's oxygen supply originated with cyanobacteria, tiny water-dwelling organisms that survive by photosynthesis. In that process, the bacteria convert carbon dioxide and water into organic carbon and free oxygen.
New research suggests ancient Earth was a water world, with little to no land in sight. And that could have major implications for the origin and evolution of life. While modern Earth's surface is about 70 percent water-covered, the new research indicates that our planet was a true ocean world some 3 billion years ago.
Homo habilis, sometimes known as "handyman", was one of the oldest known humans and lived between 2.4 million and 1.4 million years ago in Eastern and Southern Africa.