Water on Earth may be extraterrestrial in origin
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Scientist, Francis Albarède of the Laboratoire des Sciences de la Terre (CNRS / ENS Lyon / Université Claude Bernard) has come up with an interesting and plausible theory that water on earth was not formed by volcanic gases like previously thought, but by huge balls of ice thrown off by the larger planets in the outer solar system billions of years ago.
Albarède believes those ‘ice asteroids’ impacted the earth, melted and softened the earth’s crust enough for the tectonic plates to form and ‘float’ over the earth’s crust, causing oceans and continents to form, resulting in conditions that were suitable for the formation of life as we know it.
According to books, the ocean and the atmosphere were formed from volcanic gases and the Earth’s interior is the source of volatile elements. However, the rocks of the Earth’s mantle are deficient in water (geochemists estimate its concentration at two hundredth percent). The same is true on Earth’s sister planets, Venus and Mars. The main reason proposed by Albarède is that, during the formation of the Solar System, the temperature never dropped sufficiently between the Sun and the orbit of Jupiter for volatile elements to be able to condense with planetary material. The arrival of water on Earth therefore corresponds to a late episode of planetary accretion.
Source: ScienceDaily.com.
It’s an interesting theory and when geologists start delving deeper into it, it could change popular beliefs that were based on the currently accepted theory that water originated on this planet alone.
By admin on 12/11/2009
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