Where does so much water come from? This blue marble that we call planet has an area of 510 million square kilometers and, 357 of them are water. Are A world of oceans That, on average, they are about 3,900 meters deep, sometimes exceeding 11 kilometers of deep. In addition, all these masses of water (and those we do not see) reach 1,386 million cubic kilometers. What could we compare such a monstrous amount so we can get an idea? The football stadiums fall short, as almost five billion (millions of millions) would be needed. Where does it come from? You may not have an idea or even, that it sounds like you have heard that it comes from the impact of countless Meteoros. But it doesn’t matter, because as it may, a new study suggests that we were wrong so far.
Judging by the results of a team of researchers from the University of Oxford, it is possible that our planet did not need external help to accumulate such a amount of water. His study, which has just been published in the scientific journal Icarusputs in check one of the most accepted hypotheses about the origin of the land water, which suggested that the hydrogen that composes it (the “h” of the famous “H2O”) would have arrived, would have arrived, would have arrived, Mostly, in meteorsaccumulating little by little over millions of years. How have they been able to deduce such a thing? The answer is: analyzing meteorites. And, knowing this, we could suspect that they have found less hydrogen than they expected in them, but no. In fact, the opposite has happened: the large amount of hydrogen in the meteorites studied suggests that the hydrogen of the terrestrial water did not arrive, as thought so far, in meteorites. And, best of all, this apparent paradox has all your way.
Meteorites and meteorites
We are going to skip one of the golden rules of modern journalism: for a moment and thinks, he abandons even the article, if you want. Turn around what you just read and try to find the trick of the previous paragraph. And, when you have reflected it for a while, it makes it, because it makes sense.
Although we do not have all the keys to understand how the planets are formed, we know that in them the accretion plays a special role, the progressive sum of small fragments that gravitatorially attract each other. Little by little, the dough grows and forming a dwarf planet, a planet or, perhaps, even a star. The point is that we can know the chemical composition of those primal fragments. As? Analyzing fragments of that time that have survived to this day. This is: meteors.
Now, if the meteorites of that time had had little hydrogen, there would be much more time and the impact of posterior meteors to reach the amount of water we have now. On the other hand, if the amount of hydrogen in them is high, we can assume that the chemistry of the original earth also had enough hydrogen to explain a good part of the water that our planet covers. And, precisely, it has been.
LAR 12252
The object of study that solved the problem is called Lar 12252, a meteorite collected in Antarctica whose origin traces to the origins of the Solar System. The research team led by the University of Oxford focused on this meteorite and applied an advanced analysis technique known as Xanes spectroscopy (absorption structure near the X -ray edge, for its acronym in English). This technique allowed them not only to detect the presence of hydrogen, but to identify their chemical form and their origin. The most surprising thing was that hydrogen was not alone where they expected to find it, but in a fine material matrix surrounding the meteorite.
In fact, the latter turned out to be especially rich in hydrogen sulfide. The amount was surprisingly high, about five times greater than in the rest of the meteorite. And, most importantly: there were no signs that this hydrogen came from land pollution. In other words, I was there from the beginning. A proof that the chemistry of the materials that formed the planet possibly already contained sufficient hydrogen to give rise to the vast amount of water we enjoy. In this study everything indicates that the water of the earth is, to a large extent, native.
This finding not only changes what we thought about our own planet, but can also alter the way we understand the formation of other worlds.
Do not sneak it:
- However, despite the interesting results of the study, other researchers will retire the results and that the calculations to determine what percentage of the hydrogen of the terrestrial water was from the formation of the planet and how much it arrived in subsequent meteorite rains.
References (MLA):
- Barrett, Tom, et al. “The Source of Hydrogen in Earth’s Building Blocks.” Icarus, vol. 416, 2025, p. 116588. ELSEVIER, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2025.116588. Accessed April 16, 2025.