Where did the water that covers 75% of the Earth’s surface come from? Regarding the origin of water on Earth, the scientific world continues to debate for a long time whether water existed at the time the earth was formed. The prevailing theory at the moment is that the interior of the solar system was too hot at the time the Earth was formed for water to condense, and there was no water on Earth. American scientists have published a study that directly refutes this.
Edward Young, professor of geochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), professor Hilke Schlichting, professor of planetary earth and space science, and Anat Shahar, researcher at the Carnegie Foundation for Science, USA, said, “Hydrogen and magma, which were abundant in the early atmosphere of Earth’s formation, interacting. Water was created” was published on the 13th in the international journal Nature. The water did not come from outside, but the water formed by the earth itself.
It is analyzed that the Earth was created by the collision and combination of planetary animals. A planetoid is a small mass of cosmic gas, dust and dust. Continuous collisions of the animal planets accumulated heat and radioactive elements and formed magma, a huge ocean of lava. As the magma cools, the heavy material sinks, and the metallic core, mantle and crust are thought to have formed.
It was assumed that there was no water on the surface of the Earth at this time. This is because it is believed that it would have been difficult for highly volatile molecules such as water to exist due to the immense heat. The boundary of a region where ice could have formed in the early solar system is called the ‘ice line’ and is now located in the asteroid belt. It is argued that an asteroid beyond the ice line hit the Earth and brought in water.
What the research team paid attention to were the recently discovered exoplanets. A recently discovered exoplanet confirms that early planets that are only a few million years old could be surrounded by molecular hydrogen atmospheres.
Based on this fact, the research team developed a new hydraulic model of earth formation and evolution. This model analyzes the early stages of Earth’s formation by assuming 18 different reactions of 25 compounds in the early stages of Earth’s formation. The research team said, “Using the model, we focused on examining the material exchange between hydrogen molecules in the atmosphere and magma.”
According to this analysis, the magma and the atmosphere showed close interaction during the early stages of the Earth’s formation. Huge quantities of hydrogen, which was abundant in the atmosphere, were sucked into the magma, and the hydrogen migrated into the metallic core and mantle. Soon, an oxidation reaction occurred in the mantle. Oxidation is when a substance combines with oxygen. It is analyzed that a large amount of water was produced due to the oxidation reaction.
The research team said, “This analysis is one of several explanations for Earth’s evolution.
Scientists expect that the mystery of the origin of Earth’s water can be solved in the near future through the recent progress in exoplanets research. “With increasingly powerful telescopes, astronomers can understand the composition of exoplanets’ atmospheres in greater detail than ever before,” said Shahar.
