How did the oceans exist on the planet Earth? | Technology and science | Science

The Planet The Earth is covered with great oceans, lakes and rivers that provide life. One of the great mysteries that fascinates scientists is to know where all this water comes from. One of the most accepted theories is that its elements: hydrogen and oxygen came from space on board asteroids and comets. However, it is possible that another source, older than our planet, has gone unnoticed.

A team of researchers from Arizona State University (USA) added the Sun Formation Nebula. "The comets contain a lot of ice and, in theory, could have provided water," said Steven Desch, astrophysicist and one of the scientists in the team. He adds that asteroids are also a source of water, not as rich, but also abundant.

However, there is another way that water could have formed at the beginning of the solar system. "Because water is hydrogen plus oxygen and oxygen is abundant, any source of hydrogen could have been the source of the Earth's water." ", adds the researcher.

In the beginning, hydrogen was the main ingredient of the solar nebula, gas and dust formed the sun and the planets. If the abundant hydrogen in the nebula combined with the rocky material of the Earth during its formation, this could be the last source of our oceans. "The solar nebula has received the least attention among the existing theories, although it is the main reservoir of hydrogen in our primitive solar system," says Jun Wu, lead author of the solar system. published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

This new discovery perfectly fits current theories on the formation of the sun and planets. This also has implications for habitable planets beyond the solar system.

Astronomers have discovered more than 3,800 worlds that revolve around other stars and are not usually very different from ours. These exoplanets could have formed outside areas where asteroids rich in water and other building blocks might have appeared. But they could still have collected the gaseous hydrogen from the nebulae of their own stars, as did the Earth.

"Our results suggest that water formation is probably inevitable on large rocky planets in extrasolar systems," he concludes.