(ORDO NEWS) — Where does our planet come from with such a huge amount of water that covers approximately 70.8 percent of the surface of the globe?
For a long time it was believed that the water on Earth is of cometary origin, so it seems, perhaps, quite logical.
It is known that comets are actually “dirty snowballs” – ice covered with a thin layer of dust.
Therefore, when a comet approaches the Sun, it “grows a tail” – an incredibly long gaseous plume that appears as a result of the rapid melting of subsurface ice, which bypasses the liquid state and immediately becomes gaseous.
Comets contain a huge amount of water, and our Earth, as you know, at an early stage of its development did not have a dense enough atmosphere to protect the surface from falling space rocks.
Many, many comets fell on the young planet, forming oceans, seas and other bodies of water … No, all this is not true.
Search for terrestrial water outside the Earth
On March 2, 2004, the Rosetta spacecraft of the European Space Agency, developed jointly with NASA, was launched in order to catch up with the 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet (hereinafter simply 67P), enter a stable orbit around the object, and then throw a landing apparatus “Fily”.
In January 2014, the approach to 67P began, and in August of the same year, the mapping of the comet began.
Having a map, the team chose a landing site for the Fila, and on November 12, 2014, they began to implement their plans.
However, the device, having touched the comet’s nucleus, suddenly bounced off, moved in space and again sat on the comet, but in an unplanned place; Philae was in the shadows, so the inevitable discharge of the battery and eternal sleep awaited him.
Despite the partially unsuccessful landing, Philae managed to collect invaluable data that made it clear that scientists were wrong for a very long time and very seriously.
“Analysis of the data showed that 67P contains (compared to Earth) a much higher proportion of deuterium,” wrote British mathematician and science popularizer Ian Stewart in his book The Mathematics of Space.
Bingo! The chemical composition of water ice in comets is different from the chemical composition of water on Earth, which means that “dirty snowballs” are not responsible for all this abundance of liquid on our planet. But where did the water come from then?
Before we find the final answer, we will have to test two hypotheses:
- The water was delivered by meteorites, which contain much less ice than comets, which means they must have literally continuously attacked our Earth for millennia. This idea is viable, since the chemical composition of water on meteorites is, in general, identical to the chemical composition of water on Earth;
- The solar wind brought hydrogen to Earth, which reacted with oxygen to form water. The hypothesis is curious, but then we need to explain where oxygen came from on Earth.
So, there are fewer options for the appearance of water on Earth over the years, but the search for truth still has not become easier from this.
We live in a unique (for the solar system) world, but we still cannot understand what forces are responsible for the appearance of its distinctive feature (the Earth is the only body in the solar system that has liquid water on its surface).
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