By looking at the water on protostar V883 Orion, a mere 1,305 light-years from Earth, scientists found a "probable link" between the water in the interstellar medium and the water in our solar system. That likely means our water is billions of years older than the sun.
But one prevailing theory says that water originated on our planet from ice specks floating in a cosmic cloud before our sun was set ablaze, more than 4.6 billion years ago. As much as half of all the water on Earth may have come from that interstellar gas according to astrophysicists' calculations.
Since the water is 12 billion light-years away, we are seeing this cloud as it existed more than 12 billion years ago. Ultimately, this time frame means that we are seeing water that was present only 1.6 billion years after the beginning of the universe.
Earth's water is 4.5 billion years old, just like the article's title says. At least some of it is. According to the authors, planetesimals probably delivered it to Earth, but exactly how that happens isn't clear. There's a lot more complexity that scientists need to sort through before they can figure that out.
It's billions of years old. "This means that the water in our Solar System was formed long before the Sun, planets, and comets formed," Merel van 't Hoff, an astronomer at the University of Michigan who coauthored the new research published in Nature, said in a statement.
Earth's first cellular life probably arose in vats of warm, slimy mud fed by volcanically heated steam—and not in primordial oceans, scientists say. (Also see "All Species Evolved From Single Cell, Study Finds.")
A new study reveals that the water in our Solar System is really, really old – older even than the sun.
Scientists have found water trapped in minerals deep within the Earth's mantle and crust, he explained. This water is even older than dinosaurs. It doesn't look like liquid water that's in your glass, but it still made of the same stuff.
The early existence of this gas with Earth-like isotopic composition implies that Earth's water was there before the accretion of the first constituent blocks of our planet. These findings2 are published in Nature Astronomy (3 February 2022).
The origin of Earth's water has been an enduring mystery. There are different hypotheses and theories explaining how the water got here, and lots of evidence supporting them. But water is ubiquitous in protoplanetary disks, and water's origin may not be so mysterious after all.
GRB 090423 was also the oldest known object in the Universe, apart from the Methuselah star. As the light from the burst took approximately 13 billion years to reach Earth.
With that comes the formation of H2O in its current state. From this, the researchers posit that water is roughly 4.5 billion years old. You might wonder how much of this original water can now be found on Earth. The study estimates that anywhere between 1% and 50% of our natural source came from 4.5 billion years ago.
World's Oldest Water Lies At The Bottom Of A Canadian Mine And Is 2 Billion Years Old.
What does this mean exactly? It suggests that most of Earth's water was on the surface at that time, during the Archean Eon between 2.5 and 4 billion years ago, with much less in the mantle. The planet's surface may have been virtually completely covered by water, with no land masses at all.
The sunlight we see is 170 000 years and 8.5 minutes old.
Scientists think that the Earth is 4.54 billion years old. Coincidentally, this is the same age as the rest of the planets in the Solar System, as well as the Sun. Of course, it's not a coincidence; the Sun and the planets all formed together from a diffuse cloud of hydrogen billions of years ago.
Although many scientists have long speculated that those pioneering cells arose in the ocean, recent research suggests that the key molecules of life, and its core processes, can form only in places such as Jezero — a relatively shallow body of water fed by streams.
Approximately 4.6 billion years ago, the solar system was a cloud of dust and gas known as a solar nebula. Gravity collapsed the material in on itself as it began to spin, forming the sun in the center of the nebula.
The red planet once had a global ocean, rivers, and lakes. Then, the solar wind — charged particles from the Sun — stripped away the Martian atmosphere. As the planet's protective shield faded, all liquid water on the surface evaporated into space, merged with minerals, or fled underground to become water ice.
The water on our Earth today is the same water that's been here for nearly 5 billion years. So far, we haven't managed to create any new water, and just a tiny fraction of our water has managed to escape out into space. The only thing that changes is the form that water takes as it travels through the water cycle.
So it might appear that our planet may one day run out of water. Fortunately, that is not the case. Earth contains huge quantities of water in its oceans, lakes, rivers, the atmosphere, and believe it or not, in the rocks of the inner Earth.
About 466 million years ago, long before the age of the dinosaurs, the Earth froze. The seas began to ice over at the Earth's poles, and the new range of temperatures around the planet set the stage for a boom of new species.
The basic substances of the material world according to the 'Theory of the Five Elements' are Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. All material things are made of a single or a combination of the Five Elements, since these are the fundamental components.
If the last number in your birth year is 0 or 1, your element is Metal. If the last number in your birth year is 2 or 3, your element is Water. If the last number in your birth year is 4 or 5, your element is Wood. If the last number in your birth year is 6 or 7, your element is Fire.
Earth has vast oceans today, but our planet was a dry rock when it first formed — and water was a late addition, rained down in asteroids from the icy outer solar system.