Earth’s abundance of water is what sets our planet apart from other planets in our solar system. It’s what makes life possible, but where the hell did it all come from? According to a new study, somewhere between 30% and 50% of the water on Earth was created more than 4.5 billion years ago, meaning that some of the water on Earth actually predates the sun, as well as the solar system itself.
The study, which was published in Science earlier this week, claims that the distinct chemical signature of the water found on Earth and throughout the solar system could only occur if some of that water was formed before the swirling ring of dust and gas eventually gave birth to the planets, moons, comets, and asteroid that make up our solar system.
“It’s pretty amazing that a significant fraction of water on Earth predates the sun and the solar system,” said study leader Ilse Cleeves, an astronomer at the University of Michigan.
What these findings suggest is that water, one of the key ingredients of life, may be common in young planetary systems across the universe. It’s widely believed that the protoplanetary disk in which our planet formed was too hot for liquid or ice water to exist, and so the planet was born dry. So how did water come to Earth? Unfortunately, this new finding raises just as many questions as it potentially answers.
Read more about the story at Forbes.
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