Where Did Earth Get Its Oceans? Maybe It Made Them Itself

thangalin

My Impacts project depicts a scene from the prolonged bombardment, a time when Earth was cratered by asteroids and comets: * https://impacts.to/downloads/lowres/impacts.pdf#page=9 * https://impacts.to/bibliography.pdf

jdw64

Life began in the Ocean, but why did civilization begin on land? Is it because of fire? But I wonder if a different kind of civilization could have emerged

oneneptune

Wow what an awesome art piece by Ada Zejun Shen that they commissioned(?) for this article!

martzy13

So the theory explained here is that Hydrogen mixed with the Oxygen in the melted rock (magma) of earth, under extremely high pressure to create our earth specific flavor of H2O (appropriate amount of trace minerals and deuterium). Am I reading that correctly? Link to the paper mentioned in the article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09630-7

ck2

Maybe some of Earth's oceans came from its rings collapsing (not kidding) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPhwhq-f1Uo

doublerabbit

200 years from now on HN. "Where Did Earth Get Its Deserts? Maybe It's Ai, Datacentres and Climate Change"

module1973

Earth made water.. right.. and a big explosion made the earth? How stupid do you think we all are?

escape_42

i imagine this is what happens when a giant iceball starts to melt

userulluipeste

"Other scientists agree that some amount of water could have formed on Earth — but perhaps not nearly enough to produce its oceans." "Earth might have been a water factory for only a moment, but that moment may have been enough to forge oceans." Well, our planet has magnetosphere and it also had life for a long time already. Although the magnetosphere reduces the influx of Hydrogen in form of solar wind proton bombardment, it also prevents the loss of Hydrogen that managed to get captured on Earth by not letting it be blown away from the upper layers of atmosphere. Life at one point, almost two and a half billion years ago, caused the Great Oxygenation Event, in which the entire atmosphere got Oxygen rich. This very special atmosphere (for all that time) made it possible for the incoming Hydrogen (be it from the Sun, other stars, or just as the most common form of dust in the universe blown in here from whatever direction and cause) to ultimately be collected as water. Two and a half billion years, that's a lot of time to accrue water. It ought to show, at some point. So it's at least one pair of factors that could have led to a surplus of water we see today, besides what might have existed from very beginning.

kbelder

I've read Europa has more water than Earth. Is the idea that it accumulated its water through an entirely different means? Or that it formed with its water, and didn't lose it during the initial coalescence, like the Earth did? This is one of those areas where I don't know enough to oppose the scientists that are experts in this domain, and so I know I should accept the general consensus... but there's still a niggling doubt in my mind because it just doesn't feel right.

iJohnDoe

Earth inherited water, released it, and retained it, while the atmosphere and oceans formed together as a coupled system. Heating released water via volcanism. Outgassing formed an atmosphere rich in water vapor. Cooling caused condensation and rainfall. Oceans stabilized. Oxygen accumulated only after oceans already existed for over a billion years.

hofo

As opposed to what, a gift from aliens?