The actual source of water on Earth may be very different from what you think

Nothing on earth can survive without water. Therefore, the origin of water on Earth is the origin of the organisms we know about in the solar system (and in the universe).

Finding out where and how our world got water may be important for finding life in other worlds, but we do not know where the truth came from.

However, when the Earth was very young today, it is generally accepted that the bombing of water-bearing asteroids and comets was a viable means of delivering water.

But new analyzes have been collected from the rocks The moon Was brought to Earth during the Apollo era, which says it would not really be so.

Instead, according to a team of researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the explanation is largely that the earth was formed by its water. In other words, he was here the whole time.

“The earth is born with the water we have, or we are basically attacking a pure H₂Oh, there is nothing else in it, Cosmic chemist Greg Brenica explains From LLNL.

“This work removes meteorites or asteroids as potential sources of water on Earth and strongly points to the option of ‘being born’.”

The moon may seem like a strange place to search the earth for water. It is dusty, dry and not wet.

It turns out that the moon is a great place to study the history of the earth. The moon formed when there were two massive bodies – one of size TuesdayAnd the other is slightly smaller than our world – colliding with each other, turning the Earth and its moon into lumps.

Earth’s memory of this event bears over time, but in the absence of lunar plate tectonics or weather, geological evidence has not been destroyed in the same way.

This does not mean that there are no processes. The impacts of other bodies and past volcanic activity will change the surface of the moon. However, there are some models Apollo Team Is relatively unchanged.

Now, step by step The giant impact hypothesisThis catastrophic crash 4.5 billion years ago reduced the Earth and the Moon to volatile matter.

That is why, under this model, the moon is very dry; Compared to other bodies in the solar system, it contains water Much of the earth is very dryEspecially when you take into account its size.

To understand the history of the Earth-Moon system before the giant collision, the team looked at three lunar models that crystallized 4.3 to 4.35 billion years ago and studied two isotopes: the volatile and radioactive rubidium-87 isotope.⁸⁷Rb) and its decomposing isotope, strontium-87 (⁸⁷SR).

The latter in particular is considered a good proxy for understanding the lunar long-term volatile budget, and the relatively abundance of moderately volatile elements such as rubidium reflects the behavior of highly volatile organisms such as water.

Interestingly, the group’s analysis revealed that very little ⁸⁷Father in the Earth-Moon system before the Giant Conflict. This indicates that both proto-earth and colliding thea have been drastically reduced in volatile elements, suggesting that volatile depreciation is not the result of a massive impact.

The various fluctuating distributions in the Earth and Moon are derived from Earth and Thea, which may explain why the Earth is wet. It suggests that the two bodies may have been in the same common area of ​​the Solar System, and that their impact could not have occurred 4.45 million years ago, rather than creating and relocating distant Thea.

Although this challenges some accepted theories about the composition of the Earth and the Moon, researchers say it accurately explains the appearance of volatile substances in the Earth-Moon system. Explains differences in their evaporation ratios and similarities in isotope ratios.

“There were only a few kinds of objects that could make the earth and the moon, and it’s not strange.” Cosmic chemist Lars Burke explains From LLNL.

“Both may be large bodies formed in approximately the same area that met each other 100 million years after the formation of the solar system … but we’m lucky they did.”

Search published in PNAS.