Earth’s Water Is Older Than The Solar System

Cynthia McKanzie – MessageToEagle.com – According to scientists, about 50% of the Earth’s water may be older than the Solar System itself. It sounds impossible and amazing, but there is an explanation that sheds light on the mystery of water on our planet.

Scientists have long pondered the question how and when Earth’s got its water.

Ilse Cleeves at the University of Michigan conducted an experiment to determine how far back in history water on our planet and in our solar system actually formed. There are tow scientific possibilities. Either the molecules in comet ices and terrestrial oceans were born within the solar system itself, or the water originated much earlier in the cold molecular cloud that generated the sun and its protoplanetary disk.

At the outer edges of our solar system is the huge Oort Cloud that contains debris that did not get swept up in the formation of our Sun and planets. Some is from that cloud and some is captured. Occasionally, gravitational perturbations will pull a comet from that vast distance in, towards the Sun. A comet can be composed of ice.

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Cleeves’ study showed that between 30-50% of Earth’s came from the molecular cloud, making it roughly a million years older than the solar system.

To arrive at that estimate, Cleeves and Ted Bergin, a professor of astronomy, simulated the chemistry that went on as our solar system formed. “We let the chemistry evolve for a million years—the typical lifetime of a planet-forming disk—and we found that chemical processes in the disk were inefficient at making heavy water throughout the solar system,” Cleeves said. “What this implies is if the planetary disk didn’t make the water, it inherited it. Consequently, some fraction of the water in our solar system predates the sun.”

The results of this study are fascinating as we learn that the water in our oceans may be remnants of other solar systems that existed before ours was formed. Our oceans may have been oceans on other planets before they were ours.

So, this also means the water in your bottle might be older than the Sun!

Written by Cynthia McKanzie – MessageToEagle.com Staff