2023-04-14 11:45:16
According to the conclusions reached in a recent study, rocky planets with water like Earth may be much more abundant than previously thought, at least in our galaxy.
The origin of the water that forms seas and other bodies of water on the Earth’s surface is largely a mystery. There is a tendency to believe that it was brought to Earth by comets and other small bodies rich in water that collided with our planet while it was just forming. The results of the new study indicate, instead, that it originated on Earth itself, through a process that would not have anything exotic and that would therefore be common in other rocky-type planets such as Earth.
This radically changes the estimate of how common habitable planets like Earth may be in our galaxy.
Ed Young’s team, from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), USA, used laboratory simulations and sophisticated mathematical modeling to explore the exchange of materials between an atmosphere of molecular hydrogen and an ocean of magma, in many different hypothetical cases. The study authors focused on specific compounds and reactions considered complex enough to provide valuable insight into the history of Earth formation, but simple enough to be fully interpreted through their model.
The team’s analysis revealed that many of these hypothetical rocky planets had very hydrogen-rich atmospheres, a molten core, and oxygen-rich magma oceans during their formation, just like Earth did when it was forming.
“Hydrogen from the atmosphere, which can only be dissolved in liquid, comes into contact with hot magma,” Young explains. “Under these conditions, hydrogen and oxygen molecules react to become water.”
If, as it appears, most of Earth’s water was created on it, and many of the galaxy’s Earth-like planets formed under conditions not dissimilar, it stands to reason that there could be many planets in the cosmos. similar to Earth with enough water for life.
In our galaxy, habitable planets like Earth may be ordinary rather than exotic worlds. (Image: NASA)
History shows that the more we learn about Earth, the more typical it seems to be in the context of the universe, as Young points out.
The study is titled “Earth shaped by primordial H2 atmospheres”. And it has been published in the academic journal Nature. (Fountain: NCYT de Amazings)
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