where did all the water on earth come from?

Question

where did all the water on earth come from? and is there more water on earth today than there was this time last year or is it the same?

Answer 1

It did not come from hydrogen and oxygen reacting. The earth has never had sufficient gravity to hold the mass of hydrogen that would be required to create the oceans (1/9 the mass of the oceans themselves).

It was not part of the original creation unless the moon was created at the same time, and the oceans that might have existed before the moon was formed by impact cannot believably have survived a molten earth process that ejected the moon.

So comets seem the logical choice.

On the other hand, the biggest "dirt-magnet" in the solar system is Jupiter, whose gravity well has drawn in a lot of debris, which ought to include comets. Yet it has almost no water at all.

If we can get past Jupiter...and it would be sheer speculation on my part, but one way is if Jupiter is a relatively late comer to the solar system...then comets again become viable as the source of water.

The inner planets might all have had their comet-encounters, but Mercury and Venus were far too close to the Sun to keep their water, and Mars had too low a gravity to attract many comets and over time such water as it had evaporated. Only the Earth was "just right".

Total water on the Earth is probably the same this year as last year. Changes if any are much slower than that. There is evidence that a few million tons of debris fall on the Earth each year, but I have not heard that it includes water, so increases are unlikely. There is a plume of plasma that contains He, H+ and O= blown away from Earth by solar wind, but it's very low density, very low pressure, and most ionized particles are kept by Earth's magnetosphere. Doesn't look like much changes either way.

Answer 2

When the earth was still a lump of liquid molten rock, being held by the gravity of our core, The different types of rock were reacting with eachother. The elements found in them were being compressed and being forced to react with the other elements in the other rocks. These chemical reactions created what we now call our atmosphere. A layer of gases surronding the earth.

However reactions didn't stop there. At this point there was no water but there was plenty of Hydrogen and Oxygen in the atmosphere. These, over millions of years, reacted with eachother to form the Blue Planet that we have today.

Answer 3

Where did the raw materials come from?

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe as it is present in stars as the raw fuel of nuclear fusion processes. All the other elements are made by fusion in stars. Elements of low atomic number (eg Carbon #6 and Oxygen #8) are relatively easier to make therefore and are more abundant.

The top 7 most abundant elements are (Abundance measured relative to silicon = 1) :

Hydrogen 40,000
Helium 3,100
Oxygen 22
Neon 8.6
Nitrogen 6.6
Carbon 3.5
Silicon 1

Thus the elements needed for our water and our air are relatively common. And the hydrogen and the oxygen needed started out in stars and being made in stars (not necessarily in our sun),

The sun spewed out and ejected a cigar-shaped dense cloud of material that cooled to form the planets and other objects in the Solar System, as did other stars. As most comets inhabit the Oort Cloud at the very fringes of the Solar System, it is thought that we may have acquired some of our comets from the outer Oort Clouds of other stars that passed by as they rotated around the Galactic Centre, and lost some of our comets to those stars, too.

How and under what circumstances did hydrogen and oxygen combine to make water?

This doesn't seem to be completey understood yet. Scientists theorize that most of the universe's water is produced as a byproduct of star formation. Gary Melnick, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, explains: "For reasons that aren't entirely understood, when stars are born, their birth is accompanied by a strong outward wind of gas and dust. When this outflowing material eventually impacts the surrounding gas, the shock waves that are created compress and heat the gas. The water we observe is rapidly produced in this warm dense gas."

The coexistence of the solid, liquid, and gaseous phases of water on Earth is vital to existence of life on Earth. However, if the Earth's location in the solar system were even marginally closer to or further from the Sun (ie, a million miles or so), the conditions which allow the three forms to be present simultaneously would be far less likely to exist.

Earth's mass allows gravity to hold an atmosphere. Water vapor and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere provide a greenhouse effect which helps maintain a relatively steady surface temperature. If Earth were less massive, a thinner atmosphere would cause temperature extremes preventing the accumulation of water except in polar ice caps (as on Mars).

The distance between Earth and the Sun, the combination of solar radiation received and the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere ensure that Earth's surface is neither too cold nor too hot for liquid water. If Earth were more distant from the Sun, most water would be frozen. If Earth were nearer to the Sun, its higher surface temperature would limit the formation of ice caps, or cause water to exist only as vapor.

Answer 4

The water came from outgassing of volcanoes and from comets slamming into a young earth. There is the same amount of water on earth as there was last year.

Answer 5

The atmosphere before life evolved on the planet was about 80% water vapour due to the mass amount of volcanoes heating the Earth. The water vapour couldn't condense because it was so hot. But as the Earth began to cool due to volcano inactivity, just about all of this water vapour condensed.

Answer 6

back at the beginning of the universe, there was a collision of planets & we got our moon. Which from gravitational pull from the moon, we got our seasons. Which started the different climate changes which we have now. The planet was hot molten which from the moon caused our planet to change it's tilt & climates. Due to global warming we have an imbalance of fresh water melting from the pole (north & south) into the ocean brine creating more changes in our climates.

Answer 7

Same. It's the water cycle. It just gets placed in different areas. A little is in groundwater, a little is in surface water, a little is in glaciers, a lot is in the ocean. Only about 1% of the water on earth is potable (drinkable).

Answer 8

As the Earth's surface was cooling, there were violent eruptions, like volcanoes erupting. Gasses were given off,oxygen being one of them. later some of the oxygen combined with hydrogen and formed water.

Answer 9

nothing is ever destroyed or created - it just changes - barring meteortites etc, whatever is on this planet now was here a billion years ago.

At least thats what i put on a physics exam many years ago and I got 0/0 and searched for drugs

Answer 10

it's so simple H2O a combination of 2 gases 2 molecules of hydrogen and one molecule of oxygen put them together you get water

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