A Scientific exploration of the origin of water
“Water is life’s matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water.”– Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
In a basic sense water is made up of two important elements. The hydrogen and oxygen. After knowing this I had lots of questions in my head. What is hydrogen and oxygen? How they are mixed to form water by the bottle companies? We have both hydrogen and water in our atmosphere so why cant we make water at home? and more. Yes, these questions are silly but why it is hard to answer them?
Widely speaking hydrogen is the most is the most abundant element in the universe and oxygen is the third most abundant element in the universe as far as we know. There are two way to look the answer to our question. First, looking in to the space for answers. Second, looking deep into the earth. i.e. Astrophysical view point and geological view point. So the answers that i am giving are not the theories it is only hypothesis (i.e. we don't have perfect evidence but the concept is convincingly true). Let's get started.
Asteroids could have carried water, locked away in their minerals, to a young Earth, depositing it through impacts during our planet’s early years. But this isn’t the only possible explanation for our watery world.
Ron Miller for Astronomy
https://astronomy.com/sitefiles/resources/image.aspx?item={C1220933-F120-43B7-94A0-63508570B36F}
Astrophysical hypothesis
First we should know why we can't create water just by mixing oxygen and hydrogen.Basically it require a lot of energy to mix two chemical compound, as hydrogen inflammable and the energy required to mix hydrogen and oxygen is very high; this leads us to a big explosion rather than creating water.
During the birth of a star like sun we have a very unique temperature and pressure conditions. usually both temperature and pressure is very high (like 3 million kelvin). So at that conditions the reactions or the mixing of elements can occur very rapidly(say 100th of a second). So during such condition the water may be formed by the reaction of hydrogen with water in gaseous state.
Generally water have a very low condensation (change of water from gaseous state to liquid state) temperature so the water forms a dense gas disc called as portoplanetary disc and starts moving, as it moves away from the star the gas in the atmosphere of the disc cools down in certain temperature and in any one of case it condense to liquid from gas without traping other elements.
Another way of water on a planet is by the comets and trans-Neptune objects in the frost line (we live in habitable zone). Due to a star gravitational for by a big planer these get accelerated and loose its path and travel in space until it hits something like a planet. These objects are from very cool temperatures so the water is contained in a very frost state it generally contain ocean water that contains other elements like sodium. chlorine, magnesium etc. So such objects after hitting a planet will deposit a huge amount of water.
Earth formed from the dust and gas of the nebula that surrounded our infant Sun. This artist’s concept shows the protoplanetary disk of material around a young star. The disk contains the individual components of water — hydrogen and oxygen — and water in both ice and vapor forms.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
https://astronomy.com/sitefiles/resources/image.aspx?item={797FD6BC-2071-4AA1-BCF8-5A09903F12C8}
Geological hypothesis
Recent measurements of the chemical composition of Moon rocks suggest that Earth was born with its water already present.The isotopic ratios provide a unique "chemical fingerprint" that is used to compare Earth's water with reservoirs elsewhere in the Solar System. One such isotopic ratio, that of deuterium to hydrogen (D/H), is particularly useful in the search for the origin of water on Earth.
Investigating lunar samples carried to Earth by the Apollo 15 and 17 missions found a deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio that matched the isotopic ratio in carbonaceous chondrites ( A type of non modified meteorite). The ratio is also similar to that found in water on Earth which is (1.5576 ± 0.0005) × 10−4. The findings suggest a common source of water for both objects.
This supports a theory that Jupiter temporarily migrated into the inner Solar System, destabilizing the orbits of water-rich carbonaceous chondrites. As a result, some of the bodies could have fallen inwards and become part of the raw material for making Earth and its neighbors. The discovery of water vapor out-gassing from Ceres (largest object in our asteroid belt) provides related information on water-ice content of the asteroid belt.
Even though it is similar to the astrophysical hypothesis. It is little different, because these meteorites were the building blocks of the earths core. So earth was formed with water by this way.
Astronomers once thought comets, could be the source of Earth’s water. But the amount of heavy water (D2O) these icy bodies carry doesn’t match the amount found on Earth. Researchers then turned to water-rich asteroids, such as the one in this artist’s impression (bottom), as a more likely source of water.
From top: NASA; Mark A. Garlick, space-art.co.uk, University of Warwick
https://astronomy.com/sitefiles/resources/image.aspx?item={76978FB3-1444-4F5A-A545-AA55201CB713}
Conclusion
The above stated are not truly real but they are the best fitted answers we have. As I said in prologue it is not my own hypothesis alone rather I have collected the information from many books and articles.
Now it time for us to think how we got the things we have.
Hope this article ignited your mind. If you have any theories or questions regarding this you are free to express them in comments or you can chat with me in my Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/phy.sci/?hl=en.
For the previous article click the following link https://jjohnpaul.blogspot.com/2021/05/w1clear-liquid-aka-water.html
