Where did Earth's water come from?

Where did all the water come from on Earth? How was it all created here in such abundance? (I am trying to ask in a way to avoid the "it comes from your faucet!" response)
Was there a greater percentage of oxygen in our upper atmosphere at one time, and electrical storms fused the 02 with hydrogen causing the atmosphere to rain down? Was Earth bombarded with a million comets, and our water is the leftovers? Did it come from "God", making it rain for 40 nights and days? Is water some kind of residual side effect or result of natural planet formation? Was Earth terraformed 2 billion years ago, and water is part of the intelligent design? Is Earth merely a giant fuel dump (fuel being the water for some kind of alien water engine) of some ancient unknown alien race? Was there an ancient creature (extinct for 2 billion years) we don't know about that ate rock and sh** water? Water could be the fecal remains of an ancient creature and we are the highly evolved flies feeding off of it!

Anyway, can anyone tell me where water comes from?

As far as I know, Hydrogen and Oxygen are the two most abundant elements, and are also the easiest to combine (tho i may be wrong). Therefore it's simply a matter of all that gas naturally combining.

Another theory I just had is that excess H and O2 may reach us from the Sun and gradually (over thousands of years or whatever) combine to create water and fill the oceans...

This is just speculation, though...

Outgassing from Volcanos.

www.globalchange.umich.edu...

to expand on the previous posts answer, it still happens, there's a ton of water wrapped up inside the planet, and every time volcanoes blow they release a bit of it, in another billion years or so (assuming the planet survives that long) there will be alot more water on the surface

I like the theory that it arrived on comets, which is entirely possible. Comets are made up of mainly water, dry ice, and a few other compounds (such as amino acids, the building blocks of life.)

During the formation of the Solar System there were billions of comets within the inner solar system. What happened to most of them? Well, the majority either crashed into the Sun or Jupiter, but a good majority also hit other planets and moons. Earth, being the largest target in the inner Solar System, got its fair share and then some. So all these crashed comets, carrying water, left it here for us to enjoy.

I also like to think that comets are what caused life to blossom here on Earth, but that's another topic all together.

I was just reading today, on a site usually only talking about mars, that water came from outerspace. Doesn't seem that odd.

Steam from volcano's makes alot of sense I guess, although I was hoping for a more exciting answer like the terraforming one maybe...
So, if the steam came out of the volcano's, that suggest that that water already exists deep in the earth? If the water already exists in the earth, then I ask: How did it get way deep down in the earth during the formation of earth? For volcano's to spew water vapour, they have to have water vapour to spew. Where did they get that water, and how was it created deep in the earth during formation? That article above suggests that oxygen didn't come until after the oceans were created, well where did the oxygen that created the water deep in the earth come from?
This quote from David Darling suggests that the oceans have been here for about 4 billion years.

"Some of the new bacteria identified are about 16 million years old, surviving 400 metres below the sea bed. This hostile habitat might be where life first evolved more than 3.8 billion years"

Does that mean that the oceans were created in less than 500 million years? (planet is only 4.5 billion years old)

I like the theory that it arrived on comets, which is entirely possible. Comets are made up of mainly water, dry ice, and a few other compounds (such as amino acids, the building blocks of life.)

During the formation of the Solar System there were billions of comets within the inner solar system. What happened to most of them? Well, the majority either crashed into the Sun or Jupiter, but a good majority also hit other planets and moons. Earth, being the largest target in the inner Solar System, got its fair share and then some. So all these crashed comets, carrying water, left it here for us to enjoy.

The latest news is that the comet theory ought to be discarded: “The rate they shed gas as they approach the Sun says that water ice is the most abundant substance in nearly all [comets]. Could comet impacts then have been an important source of water for the Earth? Apparently not, for data from [the] Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake [comets] have confirmed a Halley result [that is, observations of the Halley Comet during its most recent approach, in 1985-86]. Comet water has twice the amount of deuterium [an isotope of the element hydrogen] than terrestrial water does (and deuterium is almost impossible to get rid of by chemical fractionation [which means that the percentage of deuterium in Earth water remains unchanged through time, so it couldn’t have been initially deuterium-rich water from comets whose deuterium content eventually diminished]). Our oceans are not cometary debris .“ (“Sky & Telescope”, Feb. 1999, p.35).

I think it's likely a combination of different sources. A few comets, a few volcanoes, a little mollecular synthesis......things can really add up if you give them a few million years.

I agree with spike, I think the water didn't just come from one source, I think over millions of years it accumulated from a variety of sources. I think the biggest source though is from the inside of the Earth through volcanoes. There may have been some water that came from comets, but I think the bulk of it came from inside the Earth. Now, how it got there, I don't know exactly.

Actually, the question should be where all the Earth's rocks or lands came from?

Could it from the a piece of the astroid belt...which may have been another planet?

I’ve found another, somewhat different, more involved, explanation, in an article titled “What’s Water Got To Do With It?”, that appeared in the August 2001 issue of the “Astronomy” magazine:

“SWAS [the Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite, launched by NASA in 1998] has given theorists [this] problem to solve: A lot of interstellar space looks unexpectedly like the Sahara Desert instead of the Everglades. Decades-old theoretical models say cold interstellar clouds should be wet, but SWAS doesn’t see the moisture. (…)

“The missing-water problem has prompted [several researchers] to provide an explanation. They believe the water isn’t missing --SWAS simply can’t see it because it’s frozen onto the surface of tiny dust particles, and frozen water doesn’t emit submillimeter-wavelength photons.

“The icy-dust-grain theory is hard to confirm. (…) Nevertheless, SWAS’s discoveries of unexpectedly dry clouds have elevated [this] theory to new prominence. That’s great news for planetary scientists, says [So-&-So], ’because there may be a connection between interstellar icy dust grains and the glass of water you fill up at your faucet’. (…) The icy-dust-grain idea fits perfectly into current thinking about how Earth got its drinking water --from icy dust grains that formed icy ’planetesimals’ in the vicinity of Jupiter’s current orbit and then fell to Earth.

“Jump back about 5 billion years to when the solar system [didn’t exist yet]. Later, the center of the collapsing [interstellar] cloud reaches a critical density necessary for fusion of hydrogen into helium, and our sun ignites. (…) the leftovers flatten into a protoplanetary disk. Near the sun, temperatures are so high that all the water is vaporized and blown out to the so-called ‘ice line’, near the orbit of Jupiter. Here, temperatures are cold enough for icy dust balls to form.

“Earth coalesced from dry, rocky material in the warmer region inside the ice line. ’The Earth had to have its water delivered’, says [someone else]. Some planetary scientists argue that comets delivered our oceans, but two findings suggest that they can be responsible for no more than 10 percent of Earth’s water. Detailed examinations of Comets Halley, Hale-Bopp, and Hyakutake show that all three contain nearly identical concentrations of isotopically heavy (deuterium-containing) water, and that concentration is twice as high in comets as it is on Earth. In addition, computer simulations strongly suggest that only a tiny fraction of all the solar system’s comets could possibly have hit Earth. For Earth to get all of its water from comets, their combined mass would have to have been equivalent to 30 Jupiters --and planetary scientists agree that amount is much too high.

“But there may have been lots of icy planetesimals.

“Early in the solar system’s history, such wet worlds should have formed beyond the ice line from the steady agglomeration of icy dust balls. Three of Jupiter’s four largest moons (…) have lots of water ice. They most likely were ‘captured’ by Jupiter’s strong gravitational attraction. But their more numerous siblings were not so lucky: ‘They were gravitationally perturbed and started sailing in toward the sun,’ says [that ’someone else’]. ’A tiny number of these could have hit Earth and given us all the water we needed.’ The early Earth was most likely struck by at least one planet-sized body: The moon is thought to be the byproduct of such a collision. Perhaps our oceans are too.”

In other words, no… but yes.

Two of you have wondered here how the water that volcanos bring to the surface reached the depths of the Earth. It simply sank due to the gravitational attraction. As the same article says: "(...) if Earth had been larger, all of its water might have sunk to the middle and left the surface dry."

Well, thank you very much for that info. Very informative! So how big does this colliding-with-earth ice/waterworld have to be to deliver us this much water? There is water throughout the depths of the earth, all over the surface (2/3's or more), and throughout the atmosphere that remains constant. There was probably lots of water that evaporated in the heat of the collision, some of the water must have been lost into space with all the other debris then collected to form the moon. Meaning there must be LOTS of water on the moon that we haven't been told about...
Anyway, how big would iceworld have to be to deliver us that kind of quantity of water? These iceworlds were not entirely solid ice either; lot's of other debris and "dust" as well.
Also, what are the odds that one of these iceworlds hit Mars as well, and all that water "simply sank due to the gravitational attraction", and "all of its water might have sunk to the middle and left the surface dry"?(I know, I know...)

You might want to read Immanuel Velikovsky's works including 'Worlds in Collision'. At the time it was written (late 40's) the scientific community successfully blocked its publication. It was published a few years later and he became the laughing stock of the scientific community --- for awhile. New discoveries have placed his work in a whole new light. He presents some compelling information regarding the sudden appearance of so much water on earth.

reply to post by IronDogg

From what I have seen and learned over the years, the water could very well have come with and from Earth. All those gasses, all that heat during her formation--and how long did that take? Another explanation could be that Earth herself was terraformed by other beings--now that blows the socks off, doesn't it? I am inclined to believe that it might have been a little of both...and I would go a little further to conjecture that all of life was engineered on this planet...that might explain a few anomalies here, a few legends there...and the wonder of us, the human beings. This from A.Journey. Have a good day!

I find this thread to be very, very interesting but full of speculation and conjecture. I was hoping for a definitive answer to the question of: what is the origin of water (along with some source information) but, alas, that is not the case. Maybe no one REALLY knows?

Oh well, I will keep searching! Maybe, someday, I will be able to contribute.

JK - San Dimas, CA

Was there an ancient creature (extinct for 2 billion years) we don't know about that ate rock and sh** water?

I am quite tempted to alter the time line just to make that be true!
Its sad when a human has a better imagination and sense of humor than a god

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

So according to the bible, earth was an unshaped empty clob of rocks and debris that also happen to already have an abundant supply of water. All that was needed was a Sun, moon and motion to give it the globe shape. The bible goes on to explain how Pangaea was created and since Pangaea started out as crammed together unconnected clumps of rock, it may explain the techtonic plates.

Most volcanoes occur at tectonic plate subduction bounderies. The subducted plate melts, the magma, being lighter than rock, works its way up to the surface and causes the volcano. On the surface of the subducted plate is all the debris that fell to the ocean floor. Included with this debris is lots and lots of water. Therefore, these volcanoes spew a lot of water vapor, but it is just recycled water, not new water.

Hot Spot volcanoes (like Hawaii) and mid ocean ridge volcanoes (like Iceland) are fueled by magma that comes up from the core of the earth. This magma has a very low water content. It isn't clear to me at all how many of these volcanoes you would need to supply the amount of water that is currently on the surface of the earth. However, given enough time, the little water vapor coming up would eventually build up.

In addition to the mid ocean ridge volcanoes, you also have all the magma coming up and forming the mid ocean ridge itself. This is a conciderably larger volumn of magma that erupted through the volcanoes.

Does someone want to do the math? If magma is 1% by mass made up of water, how much magma would we need to fill the oceans with water? Over 4 B years of eruption, how much magma per year would that be? DO these numbers sound reasonable?

This brings up another interesting question.

Where did all the Salt water come from?

They say that there is more salt in the oceans than in all the rocks in the world.