A New Hypothesis on the Origin of Water on Earth and Mars | Chapter 8 | Challenging Issues on Environment and Earth Science Vol. 3

 The origin of water on Earth is still a scientific and accurate question that has yet to be resolved. Water in liquid or gaseous form could not have existed on the young, red-hot Earth, it is certain. As a result, it is widely thought that comets carried water to Earth. However, the isotope ratio (H/D) of water on comets is more than twice that of water on Earth, implying that comets may have provided only a portion of Earth's water. The stable bipolar magnetic field that protects the Earth from the solar wind – a plasma wave of protons and electrons – was created only less than one billion years ago, according to laboratory experiments at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan. Recent laboratory experiments at the University of Maryland in the United States have shown that the young Earth must have had a multipolar magnetic field during its early age, when its centre of iron and nickel was still molten. This multipolar magnetic field, on the other hand, may not have offered any defence against the solar wind. In reality, it would have served as a massive solar wind collector, and the same could be said for our neighbouring planet Mars. As a result of these two scientific studies, an entirely new theory about the origin of water on Earth and Mars has emerged. The solar wind would have been able to penetrate the thick, Venus-like carbon dioxide atmospheres of Earth and Mars along the vertical magnetic field lines during the early periods of the two planets. The atmosphere would have been exposed to the young Sun's powerful ultraviolet rays and intense solar wind, which would have separated the carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere into their component parts of oxygen and carbon due to the absence of an ozone layer. The oxygen released would have been able to interact with the solar wind's hydrogen nuclei to form water molecules, which would then fall as rain.

Author (s) Details

Hans Merkl
Johannes-Kepler-Polytechnikum, Engineer Academy, Am Kirchsteig 4, 92637 Weiden, Regensburg, Germany.

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