A great unknown has always prevailed in the minds of many scientists: where did water come from on Earth? But no objective answer could ever be given. Now, however, research has apparently managed to find it, or a good part of it. Almost 70% of the globe is covered by water and without this element, life would not have developed. But where did all the water on the planet come from? Let’s look at the answers of modern scientists:
The mystery of water is more than you think
In 2020, the enigma seems to have found a lot of light, after a team of French researchers published in the journal Science about their great discovery: according to them, the causes of water spreading over the face of the Earth are nothing more and nothing less than space rocks and thanks to the fact that since the beginning this planetary mass has always been wet, water developed. The director of the research, Dr. Laurette Piani, a cosmochemist, pointed out that the results of her studies totally contradicted the theory that says that water was transported to this planet by strong impacts of asteroids and comets.
But then, how did water start on this planet?
According to the first speakers who proposed pioneering models of the origins of the Solar System, there were swirling rings of gas and dust around the Sun, and from these, the inner planets were formed, which were too hot to harbor ice. To assert this, these scientists also argue that this would prove the alleged sterile environment of Mercury, Mars and Venus, unlike our planet, which is rich and abundant in water.
These researchers are convinced that the Earth was formed first and water came much later, and they suspect that it was meteorites that brought us the precious liquid from which life as we know it emerged. These stones from space that allegedly impacted the surface have been called carbonaceous chondrites, which contain large amounts of hydrated minerals.
Scientists realized that the chemical composition of these carbonaceous chondrites does not correspond to rocks on Earth. It was also discovered that these enigmatic stones were formed in the outer zone of the Solar System, which is why they may not have arrived in the early stages of the Earth.
They also have in mind the meteorites called enstatite chondrites, which do have a more related chemical composition, since they possess isotopes similar to those of calcium, oxygen and titanium. Because of these factors, they are very much inclined to think that these were the building blocks of the Earth and other sister planets.
However, because these rocky blocks were formed in the vicinity of the Sun, it was assumed that they were too low in humidity to harbor rich reserves of the Earth’s vital liquid. Using a technique called mass spectrometry, Dr. Piani and her fellow scientists at the University of Lorraine tried to prove that this was the case by measuring the hydrogen content of 13 enstatite chondrites.
But the rocks at present are very few. They represent only 2% of the meteorite rocks classified so far, and it is very difficult to locate them in an original, uncontaminated environment. The researchers noted that these meteorites had in their interior a good amount of hydrogen that would have provided this planet with at least three times the volume of water of the seas and perhaps higher levels.
Dr. Piani said in a press release that they had found that the hydrogen isotopic composition of meteorites of the enstatite class of chondrites is very similar to that of water stored in the Earth’s mantle. In addition, they corroborated that the isotopic composition of the seas presents a rare mixture that has 95% of liquid from enstatite chondrites, an aspect that would join the evidence that these millenary rocks were the cause of much of the water on our planet.
This group of scientists emphasized that everything discovered does not exclude that later, with time, by means of comets and other sources, more water would have been added to the globe, but that originally and on a larger scale, it was the enstatite chondrites that gave us such a wonderful and magical element, of which nothing more has been discovered, since recently previously unsuspected mysteries have been found in the particles of water, experiments carried out and massively disseminated by Dr. Masaru Emoto.
A great unknown has always prevailed in the minds of many scientists: Where did the water on Earth come from? But no objective answer could ever be given. However, it seems that now an investigation has managed to find her, or a good part of it. Almost 70% of the globe is covered by water and without this element, life would not have developed. However, where did all that water on the planet come from?
