The human body consists of around 70% water, and we use water for many things in life, but where does our water come from? I am not talking about our drinking water that we either get from the tap or a well or river, but where does our water come from really?
Where Does Our Water Come From?
Water is in us and all around us in the oceans, the rivers, lakes, dams, in the clouds, and if we are lucky it is pouring from our taps. Where does all this water come from though? It did not just appear out of nowhere.
If we want to find out the source of the water on earth, we need to look at the origins of the universe. According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), “One second after the Big Bang, the temperature of the universe was roughly 10 billion degrees and was filled with a sea of neutrons, protons, electrons, anti-electrons (positrons), photons and neutrinos.â€
Hydrogen and helium, the lighter elements, took shape from these atomic building blocks within minutes, in a process called nucleosynthesis. These elements then underwent fusion inside of stars and during supernovas, after which these stars ejected waves of the heavier elements, including oxygen into space where they mixed with the lighter elements.
Now we have hydrogen and oxygen molecules which is what water consists of, but just the formation of these molecules does not water make. In order to form water one needs two hydrogen (H) atoms and one oxygen (O) atom and a spark of energy. The process of forming water is a violent one, and one that scientists still cannot reproduce successfully.
Truthfully, nobody knows exactly how earth came to have oceans, lakes and rivers filled with water; scientists can only theorise:
1. One theory is that millions of asteroids and comets with a consistency akin to cosmic sponges loaded with water that was released on impact slammed into the Earth’s surface around 4 billion years ago, forming our oceans, lakes and rivers;
2. Another theory is that earth was bombarded not with asteroids, but with by oxygen and other heavy elements that were produced within the sun. Proponents of this theory believe that the combination of oxygen, hydrogen and other gases released in a process known as degassing formed the earth’s atmosphere and oceans;
3. Scientists from Japan’s Tokyo Institute of Technology have yet another theory; thick layers of hydrogen originally covered the surface of the earth and when they interacted with oxides in the earth’s crust the oceans were formed.
So, where does our water come from? We really cannot answer that question, but we do know we need it and that we must conserve our water as much as we can so that we always have fresh drinking water.
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