Earth's Water Didn't Come From Outer Space 181
sciencehabit writes "Where did Earth's oceans come from? Astronomers have long contended that icy comets and asteroids delivered the water for them during an epoch of heavy bombardment that ended about 3.9 billion years ago. But a new study suggests that Earth supplied its own water, leaching it from the rocks that formed the planet. The finding may help explain why life on Earth appeared so early, and it may indicate that other rocky worlds are also awash in vast seas."
Not Invented Here - NOT (Score:4, Interesting)
Not Invented Here - NOT
This news goes in hand with the parsimonious explanation that the Earth is the endogenous source of life, too.
I habitually distrust news that relate any process on Earth as influenced by Venus, Mars, or 'Outer Space'. Remember what a fool they made out of Bill Clinton with the 'bacteria from Mars'...
Invented Here - YES!
Re:So... there is a God? (Score:5, Interesting)
Keep up, will you? The water, which is the lifeblood of living things, came out of stones.
I wonder how much this removal of water from the rocks depends on the earth having a hot mantle? If the mantle were cooler, then the water would stay there instead of being cooked out as steam and being able to re-condense else where. This is massively speculative of course - but could part of the reason mars no longer has a liquid ocean be that since the planet has cooled now, all it's water is locked up back in the rocks again? Is the fact that we have a hot interior on our planet the main driving factor that allows us to have a liquid ocean?
Re:Settled science, huh? (Score:1, Interesting)
Another decades-old pillar of the Theory of evolution shot to hell.
And this new waterlogged guess makes no more scientific sense than the absurd guess that preceded it.
The existing thought regarding water on Earth is that there wasn't enough around to explain why we have so much now, unless it came from somewhere else. We know that comets are largely made of water, and we know they hit planets all the time, so it's quite likely that some of the water DID come from them.
What this article is saying, is that it's possible the Earth could have formed with enough water on its own, and wouldn't need an outside source to explain how much is here now.
You're actually backwards- this is a blow to Anti-evolution 'theory'. The creationists have tried to claim that life could not have evolved on Earth because there wasn't enough water and therefore God must have had to be involved; the argument that the water didn't necessarily originate here was a counter to that argument which fits in with what we see happening in the Real World. This article is showing that the counter-argument is not needed to dismiss that specific Creationist argument, since the water could very easily have been here the whole time.
Either way, it says absolutely nothing about Evolutionary Theory at all, since that Theory addresses life actually starting and then developing, and you're talking about the conditions for life not the process of life itself.
Of course, that's probably way too complex for you to understand, so I'll sum it up: If you're arguing over how to make an omelette, whether you brought the eggs from the store or got them from the cooler doesn't matter.
Of course it did (Score:3, Interesting)