How old is water? When was it first formed on planet earth (if it was formed on planet earth)?

Answer 1

Most water on Earth should be about 4.6 billion years old.

Many scientists feel that water came to Earth in comets, but checking the chemical isotopes, we find that they don't match comets. So water must have come from somewhere else. Now it appears that water is formed inside a planet when the planet is molten. Here is how.

The material that forms a planet traps methane and ammonia on the dust and ice and those gases are from the nebula- the cloud of dust and gas that the Sun and planets formed from.

Inside the planet, where there is heat and pressure, and the hydrogen contained in the methane and ammonia reacts with the molten rock to form water vapor, nitrogen, petroleum, and carbon dioxide.

Over the years, the water works its way to the surface in venting and volcanic eruptions, and that is where it comes from. Some arrives due to comets, but it cannot be a significant amount because of the isotope ratios - like fingerprints in the elements.

Even today from 70% to 90% of what comes out of volcanoes is water vapor. Most of the clouds from eruptions are steam.

It is estimated that about 10 to 100 times the water in our oceans still exists inside the mantle today. Here is a site showing planetary formation and how the chemistry proceeds.

http://xenotechresearch.com/planfor1.htm

Answer 2

Flavio and aichip2 have got it. The sexy new idea about comets bringing water to the Earth is still controversial and hasn't been entirely accepted by the scientific community. Many still believe that most of the water here was out-gassed during the Primary Differentiation. More research will hopefully reveal the clues we need to get a better handle on this issue. (By the way, the Earth did NOT form as a hot, incandescent, glowing blob of magma in space...Hollywood got it wrong again!)

You can find the residence time for well water--that is how long has it been since this water fell as rain, by studying isotope compositions. Here in N. Texas, most of the subsurface water is believed to be Eocene in age.

Answer 3

A recent line of opinion among astronomers claims that most, or all, Earth's water may have been carried by comets impacting on Earth's surface far in the past. If this is true, water can be very very old (several billion years) because comets originated at the time when the solar system formed, that is, long before the Earth itself.
The interesting aspect of this possibility is that cometary water also contains important carbon-based molecules, such as aminoacids, the same molecules at the very base of Earth's life. This means that comets may have had a role of "life carriers".
There are several space missions aimed to test these hypotheses. I worked on one of them a few years ago: the ESA Rosetta Lander, which is now ongoing to rendez-vous with the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. You can check out my website for more info.

Answer 4

In its initial stages, the Earth was too hot for an atmosphere to form. Any gases were superheated and released into space. However, once the Earth cooled sufficiently, sometime in the first 700 million years of its existence, clouds began to form in the atmosphere, and the Earth entered a new phase of development. It began to rain. And it rained and it rained and it rained.


4,000,000,000 Years Ago



This is an artist's impression of what Earth looked like 4 billion years ago. The planet has no oxygen in its atmosphere and no ozone layer, so poisonous ultraviolet rays from the Sun hit the surface directly. The molten centre of the planet is still extremely hot, and volcanoes erupt constantly, forming the mountains and landscapes of the planet. Water droplets, contained in the planet's atmosphere, cannot settle as liquid or ice because the surface is so hot.


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1,000,000,000 Years Ago



The planet has cooled and volcanic eruptions are less common. Water is now allowed to settle, and forms oceans. Green algae forms in the water, which photosynthesises and produces oxygen which is put into the air. The oxygen forms a layer of ozone which protects the Earth from poisonous ultraviolet rays from the Sun. Land drifts apart to begin forming continents

Answer 5

Water was formed in the Beginning of the Earth

Answer 6

I've included a very interesting article on the origin of water on earth that may be of interest. In one proposed theory the earth was bombarded by comets which are mostly hunks of water and ice hurling through space in what is called a Heavy Bombardment phase.

Answer 7

Best estimate is that water which constituted the bulk of the primordial atmosphere condensed out 3.8 billion years ago. Today, water is continuously being recirculated with a residence time in the atmosphere of roughly 1 week, so you could say water is about 1 week old.

Answer 8

As old as the earth!

Answer 9

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Answer 10

It is about 2 billion years old.