(ORDO NEWS) — The Earth, like other planets located relatively close to the Sun, had a temperature that did not allow ice to form.
The water brought from other rocks from space, which will eventually form the Earth, would also evaporate instantly. This means that water came to our planet later. There are three different theories about how water appeared on Earth.
Hydrogen hit the planet from space
Some meteorites, called carbonaceous chondrites, like other hydrated celestial bodies, formed far enough from the Sun to contain water in the form of ice. At first, scientists thought that this was how water was delivered from space to Earth.
Hydrogen was already in the earth’s rocks
A 2020 study found that much of the water on Earth came from the minerals that formed the planet. Researchers have found signs of water in one type of rare meteorites (E-type chondrites), and their chemical composition is close to that which our planet’s crust had 4.5 billion years ago.
This kind of meteorites also contained hydrogen. In their work, the researchers examined 13 such meteorites and found that they contain less water than ordinary celestial bodies of this kind. However, this amount of water is enough to explain the amount of liquid that is on our planet today.
The truth is in the middle
These two theories do not contradict each other at all: nothing prevented the Earth from receiving water from different sources.
And this version seems the most plausible, since the summation of the amount of water from terrestrial rocks and that that came from space gives figures comparable to the volume of this liquid that is on the planet today.
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