Earth
How did water survive Earth's searingly hot birth? A radical new answer turns planetary history on its head – and could revolutionise the search for alien life
31 October 2018
MILTON KEYNES has the dubious distinction of being the town that supposedly has the most roundabouts in the UK. It is not the sort of place you might expect to be at the centre of a profound debate about Earth’s deep history.
And yet, on its outskirts there is a lab housing a seemingly haphazard set of metal tubes, canisters, wires, cables and control boards, assembled into a piece of apparatus the size of a small car. My colleagues and I have used it to make the most precise measurements ever of rocks bearing traces of Earth’s earliest atmosphere. We believe that those measurements may put to bed a perplexing scientific mystery.
This planet is a lush world of rivers, lakes and streams. But it shouldn’t be, according to our traditional interpretation of Earth’s past. Our measurements at the Open University in Milton Keynes provide a strong indication that this explanation is past its sell-by date. The true story of how Earth got its water looks to be far stranger. If we are right, it means water, and potentially life that thrives in it, is probably far more widespread in the universe than we dared dream.
To understand why the presence of so much water on Earth is so unlikely, we need to go back more than 4.6 billion years. The young sun is shining, and encircling it is a maelstrom of gas and dust that will clump into the planets. Any water exists as ice in interstellar space. If any of that ice found itself in the inner part of the solar system, where the rocky planets like Earth…
Article amended on 1 November 2018
We have corrected Natalie Starkey's byline
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I am a geologist and planetary scientist with a deep understanding of Earth's geological history and the processes that have shaped our planet over billions of years. My expertise extends to the formation of Earth's atmosphere, the origins of water on our planet, and the implications for the search for extraterrestrial life.
The article you provided, written by Natalie Starkey on October 31, 2018, discusses a radical new perspective on Earth's history and the origin of water. In summary, the traditional interpretation of Earth's past suggests that the planet should not be the lush, water-filled world we see today. However, recent precise measurements of rocks bearing traces of Earth's earliest atmosphere, conducted at the Open University in Milton Keynes, challenge this conventional view.
The measurements hint at a far stranger story about how Earth acquired its water more than 4.6 billion years ago. According to the article, during the early stages of the solar system's formation, the young sun was surrounded by a chaotic mix of gas and dust. In this environment, any water present existed as ice in interstellar space. The article suggests that the prevailing explanation for how Earth obtained its water may be outdated, and a new understanding could revolutionize our perspective on the distribution of water and potentially life in the universe.
If you have specific questions or if there are particular concepts from the article you would like me to elaborate on, please feel free to ask.
