Origin of water on Earth

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Water covers about 70% of the Earth's surface









The origin of water on Earth, or the reason that there is clearly
more water on the Earth than on the other planets of the Solar System
, has not been clarified. There are several acknowledged theories as to
 how the world's oceans were formed over the past 4.6 billion years.

Contents

  [hide

[edit]Origins

Some of the most likely contributory factors to the origin of the Earth's oceans are as follows:

[edit]Water in the development of the Earth

A sizeable quantity of water would have been in the material which formed the Earth.[1][2] Water molecules

 would have escaped Earth's gravity more easily when it was less massive during its formation. Hydrogen
 and helium are expected to continually leak from the atmosphere, but the lack of denser noble gases in the
 modern atmosphere suggests that something disastrous happened to the early atmosphere.
Part of the young planet is theorized to have been disrupted by the impact which created the Moon, which
 should have caused melting of one or two large areas. Present composition does not match complete
melting and it is hard to completely melt and mix huge rock masses.[3] However, a fair fraction of
 material should have been vaporized by this impact, creating a rock-vapor atmosphere around the
young planet. The rock-vapor would have condensed within two thousand years, leaving behind hot
 volatiles which probably resulted in a heavy carbon dioxide atmosphere with hydrogen and water vapor
. Liquid water oceans existed despite the surface temperature of 230°C because of the atmospheric
pressure of the heavy CO2 atmosphere. As cooling continued,subduction and dissolving in ocean water
removed most CO2 from the atmosphere but levels oscillated wildly as new surface and mantle cycles
 appeared.[4]
Study of zircons has found that liquid water must have existed as long ago as 4.4 Ga, very soon after
 the formation of the Earth.[5][6][7] This requires the presence of an atmosphere. The Cool Early Earth
theory covers a range from about 4.4 Ga to 4.0 Ga.
In fact, recent studies of zircons (in the fall of 2008) found in Australian Hadean rock hold minerals that
 point to the existence of plate tectonics as early as 4 billion years ago. If this holds true,
 the previous beliefs about the Hadean period are far from correct. That is, rather than a hot,
 molten surface and atmosphere full of carbon dioxide, the Earth's surface would be very much
like it is today. The action of plate tectonics traps vast amounts of carbon dioxide, thereby eliminating
the greenhouse effects and leading to a much cooler surface temperature and the formation of solid
 rock, and possibly even life.[8]

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