Water or Sun: What came first? Scientists say Water Came First on Earth

A new study has predated the origin of Earth’s ocean, their frozen form in lunar craters and meteorites, saying they are much older than the birth of the solar system.

The new findings have provided stronger clues over the possibility of life on other planets. The origin of water in the solar system had been largely debated by the global scientist community for a long time. The scientists worldwide have been clueless about the fact that whether water came from ice ionized at the time of the solar system formation or if they were present before the birth of the solar system and originated in the cold interstellar cloud of gas that led to the formation of the sun.

Lead study researcher Lauren Cleeves, from the University of Michigan said, “It’s remarkable that these ices survived the entire process of stellar birth.”

Cleeves has been doing rigorous research work on how radioactivity, galactic cosmic rays and other phenomena of high-energy influence planet-forming disk, contributing to the formation of celestial bodies.

Cleeves said that the study showed that the conditions in the early solar system weren’t ideal for the synthesis of new water molecules.

“Without any new water creation, the only place where these ices could have come from was the chemically rich interstellar gas that resulted into the formation of the solar system,” the researchers said.

For the study, the researchers conducted an experiment by running computer models that helped them to compare ratios of hydrogen with its heavier isotope called deuterium, which has been enriching the water on the solar system over the long period.

Concluding the study, the researchers said that in order to reach the ratios present in the ocean water of the Earth as well as samples of comets and meteorites, a huge possibility of life persists that show at least some of the water would have formed before the birth of the sun.

“Understanding the production of organic material at the early stages of star formation is critical to piecing together the gradual progression from simple molecules to potentially life-bearing chemistry,” Arnaud Belloche from Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, who conducted the study, said.

The study was detailed in were published in the latest issue of the journal Science.