Water on Earth originated during the formation of the proto solar disk, as the solar system is forming, and not from asteroids. (Photo : NASA)
Water on Earth was apparently already present when the planet was born according to a new as study, which is contrary to the theory that asteroids or comets brought life giving molecules that resulted in water when they crashed into the planet.
This new study examined the ancient rocks deep below the Earth's mantle where scientists gathered new information to give an idea about how planets were formed during the early stages of the solar system.
According to led author of the study, Lydia Hallis from the University of Hawaii's NASA Astrobiology Institute and the University of Glasgow, these new measurements are suggesting that Earth apparently possessed water during the very start of the planet formation where water originally formed inside the proto solar disk.
Before planets are born, proto solar disks are made of molecular gas and dust, before the sun and the Earth and the rest of the solar system was born some 4.6 billion years ago. Hallis says that the initial belief was that heat that was produced during this accretion process made Earth extremely hot that boiled off all the remaining water which was then replaced later by asteroid and comet impacts. However, in this new study, this has not been the case.
In order to obtain this data, Hallis and team utilized advanced ion microprobe instrumentation in order to further examine the hydrogen composition of the water that is found deep inside the Earth's mantle from rock samples that were taken from Baffin Island in Canada.
Researchers now confirm that deep inside the Earth's mantle lies hydrogen composition from primordial water that matches the composition of the proto solar disk before any planets existed in the solar system.
The team was also able to conclude the pristine nature of these rocks by careful examination of their isotopic helium ratios as these can only be found in samples from a specific region of the deep mantle that has not been exposed to any prior degassing or surface contamination like plate tectonic mixing or recycling.
Hallis reveals that these are the most primitive rocks that were ever discovered on the surface of the planet, where their water content can give very valuable data about the Earth's early history and the real origins of water.
This event is also extremely rare as lava that erupts into the surface apparently came from a place deep down the Earth's recesses where nobody has previously obtained measurements that they were indeed originally from the deep mantle.
Scientists then examined the deuterium to hydrogen ratio in the water and found out that it was different from surface water and water that contained minerals that dwells in the upper mantle. This new study is published in the journal, Science.
