Where did Earth's global ocean come from? A team of Arizona State University geoscientists led by Peter Buseck, Regents' Professor in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE) and School of Molecular Sciences, has found an answer in a previously neglected source. The team has also discovered that our planet contains considerably more hydrogen, a proxy for water, than scientists previously thought.
Where did Earth's global ocean come from? A team of Arizona State University geoscientists led by Peter Buseck, Regents' Professor in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE) and School of Molecular Sciences, has found an answer in a previously neglected source. The team has also discovered that our planet contains considerably more hydrogen, a proxy for water, than scientists previously thought.
So where is it? Mostly down in our planet's core, but more about that in a minute. The bigger question is where did all this come from in the first place?
"Comets contain a lot of ices, and in theory could have supplied some water," said Steven Desch, professor of astrophysics in SESE and one of the team scientists. Asteroids, he added, are a source as well, not as water-rich yet still plentiful.
"But there's another way to think about sources of water in the solar system's formative days," Desch explained. "Because water is hydrogen plus oxygen, and oxygen is abundant, any source of hydrogen could have served as the origin of Earth's water."
Read more at Arizona State University
Image: Planet Earth -- or Planet Water? ASU geoscientists have found that our home contains within itself six or seven global oceans worth of hydrogen, in addition to the ocean seen here in a photo of the Pacific taken from the International Space Station. (Credit: NASA)
