Where on Earth did water come from

 

    The water you drink, bathe with, wash your clothes with, cook with, this water is older than the age of the earth. This water is at least 4.6 billion years old.

    About 70% of Earth's surface is covered by water - Apparently Earth is the only planet in the solar system that has liquid water on its surface. The question is how did water come to earth. Did this water come to Earth. Did this water form Earth? has been a part of the earth since the time of or reached the earth after the formation of the earth.

    To understand the process of water formation, we need to understand the conditions in the universe billions of years ago the universe began 13.8 billion years ago with the Big Bang. Immediately after the Big Bang, there were only three elements in the universe, hydrogen, helium, and a very small amount of lithium - there was no oxygen in the universe at that time, which is necessary for the formation of water (two atoms of hydrogen in each molecule of water).  and one atom is oxygen).

    About 30 to 40 million years after the Big Bang, the first stars appeared in the universe. These stars consisted only of hydrogen and helium. Their cores began to fuse with larger nuclei, including oxygen nuclei when the stars explode as supernovae, these heavy elements (including oxygen) would spread hundreds of light-years away. In these explosions, oxygen and hydrogen atoms combine to form a large number of water molecules, H2O as if water had existed for billions of years. Formed first and exists everywhere in the universe.

    Now the question is how did this water get to Earth. A few light-years away from the hydrogen cloud that formed our solar system, a star exploded in a supernova, releasing many heavy elements and water molecules into the hydrogen cloud also expanded the supernova's pressure wave caused the cloud to contract and form a spiral. This material collapsed to form the Sun and the ejected material formed solar planets, asteroids, and meteorites. In these bodies water was abundant.

    Bodies that were relatively close to the Sun (including Earth) were initially stripped of water molecules by the heat of the Sun and the solar wind. The Earth was initially composed of super hot magma, from which all of Earth's water most scientists agree that after the Earth's crust cooled, hundreds of millions of meteorites containing much of their water ice fell on Earth's surface. Formed far away from the Sun where the Sun's temperature was so low that water could exists as ice. Just a few million years after Earth's formation, many asteroids were thrown out of orbit by the gravity of Jupiter and Saturn. Went and fell on the Earth and nearby planets (and the Moon). In addition, some water came to Earth with comets.

    How can we determine whether the current water on Earth came from meteorites or comets? To understand this, we first need to understand the isotopes of hydrogen. Most hydrogen atoms have only one proton in their nucleus but some hydrogen atoms have a neutron in their nucleus in addition to a proton. This type of hydrogen is called deuterium. It is said that due to this neutron, the deuterium atom has twice the mass of the hydrogen atom like hydrogen, deuterium was also formed immediately after with Big Bang, within about twenty minutes of the Big Bang.

    When scientists studied the ratio of hydrogen to deuterium in seawater, they found that this ratio was exactly the same as that found in many meteorites. Many meteorites that have fallen to Earth are four and a half billion years old. There are water molecules in these meteorites. The ration od deuterium in the water in these meteorites is the same as in sea water. According to the research done so far on the hydrogen found in comets, the deuterium in comets. The ration is about twice the ratio of deuterium found in meteorites to seawater. Indicating that most of the water on Earth's surface came from meteorites, from comets.