• Question: How was oceans originally formed?

    Asked by anon-174238 to Alex, Carl, Hayley, Melanie, Tim, Yewande on 18 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Tim Craig

      Tim Craig answered on 18 Jun 2018:

      A really great question. We don’t entirely know the answer to this. Earths oceans are roughly 4 billion years old, and formed not long after our planet finished its accretion (assembling). The interesting aspect is where did all the water come from. There are currently two main options. The first is that the water is released from the Earths interior during volcanism and tectonic cycling, as the Earth cools down. The other is that it arrives later to our planet, through the impact of water-bearing comets from space.

    • Photo: Alex Seeney

      Alex Seeney answered on 18 Jun 2018:

      I’d like to think it’s a combination of the two things that Tim mentioned. It’s likely that the material that the Earth was originally made from would have contained a large amount of water. It is also possible that some water may have been created as a result of photosynthesis and redox reactions (producing water if the redox reaction is biological).

    • Photo: Carl Barford

      Carl Barford answered on 20 Jun 2018:

      You have asked a good question. The earth was a molten ball of rock and metal, so no water there. Then it cooled , formed a solid crust and suddenly it was raining. What is even more strange is some people think the sea was as salty then as it is now.
      I have a feeling the water came from further out in the solar system, and crashed to earth when the planets were forming, then condensed once the planet was cool enough

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