Photo: Clive Kim

How did Earth get water?

skyatnightmagazine.com - Where did Earth get its water from? | BBC Sky at Night Magazine

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Water, water everywhere. This memorable phrase from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner may be the desperate musings of a thirsty sailor stranded at sea, but it could also be considered a concise description of planet Earth itself. About 71% of Earth's surface is called water: it's not for nothing that our home is known as the 'blue planet'. A view of our blue planet Earth captured during Apollo 10, 18 May 1969. Credit: NASA / restored by Toby Ord Human beings are mostly made of water. We require regular intake of water for our body to perform its necessary functions; to keep us alive. We may have originally come from water, before evolving into the land-based mammals that dominate the planet today. We see water throughout the Solar System, too: beneath the icy crusts of moons like Enceladus and Europa, or in the geology of Mars, which tells us that the Red Planet was once a much wetter, more hospitable place than it is today.

Without water, we would be nothing. But where did Earth's water come from?

What are the origins of water across the Universe, within our Solar System, and how did water find its way to our planet?

These are tricky questions to answer, but planetary science has come a long way to providing solutions as to where exactly water came from. A view of Jupiter's icy moon Europa, as seen by the Galileo spacecraft. Blue-white areas indicate relatively pure water ice, while red represents areas of water ice mixes with hydrated salts. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute

How water is formed

Water molecules form in interstellar space by chemical reactions between hydrogen molecules and oxygen-bearing molecules such as carbon monoxide. The Solar System inherited its water from ice-coated interstellar grains in the dust cloud from which the Sun and planets formed 4.6 billion years ago. An artist's illustration showing the dusty disc surrounding our young Sun: the formation of the Solar System. Credit: NASA

In the Solar System this water became locked in two principal forms.

Far from the Sun, where temperatures are low, water formed icy objects such as comets, while closer to the Sun water reacted with rocky materials to form hydrated minerals. It's thought that the mostly likely way that planet Earth inherited its water was from asteroids and comets crashing into it. ESA's Rosetta mission revealed plumes of dust and gas erupting from the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Did icy comets like this bring water to planet Earth? Credit: ESA Much of this water would have initially been added to the Earth’s growing mantle as it formed and was released from the interior by subsequent volcanic activity. The next time you pour yourself a cold drink of water on a hot day, consider the cosmological history contained within that single glass of clear liquid, and how vital it has been in the evolution of the Solar System. This article originally appeared in the July 2008 issue of BBC Sky at Night Magazine.

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Which planet is hottest?

Venus Venus is the exception, as its proximity to the Sun, and its dense atmosphere make it our solar system's hottest planet.

solarsystem.nasa.gov - Solar System Temperatures

Solar System Temperatures Mean Temperatures on Each Planet Planetary surface temperatures tend to get colder the farther a planet is from the Sun. Venus is the exception, as its proximity to the Sun, and its dense atmosphere make it our solar system's hottest planet. The mean temperatures of planets in our solar system are: Mercury - 333°F (167°C)

Venus - 867°F (464°C)

Earth - 59°F (15°C)

Mars - Minus 85°F (-65°C)

Jupiter - Minus 166°F (-110°C)

Saturn - Minus 220°F (-140°C)

Uranus - Minus 320°F (-195°C)

Neptune - Minus 330°F (-200°C)

Dwarf Planet Pluto - Minus 375°F (-225°C)

This graphic shows the mean temperatures of various destinations in our solar system. (Planets not to scale.) In general, the surface temperatures of planets decrease with increasing distance from the Sun. Venus is an exception because its dense atmosphere acts as a greenhouse and heats the surface to above the melting point of lead. Mercury rotates slowly and has a thin atmosphere, and consequently, the night-side temperature can be more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit lower than the day-side temperature. It can be as cold as -290°F (-179°C) on Mercury at night. Temperatures for the gas and ice giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) are taken from a level in the atmosphere equal in pressure to sea level on Earth.

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