Water is a basic component of all living things and it is impossible to imagine life without water on the planet. To understand how planets like Earth formed, it’s important to know the history of water.
According to astronomers, water’s journey begins with its formation as individual molecules. When these molecules present in space reach their resting places on planets, the trail will end. The trace begins in the interstellar medium, with hydrogen and oxygen gas molecules. It ends up in ice sheets and oceans on Earth and other planets. What remains unexplored is what appears in the middle of this path.
Formation of planets
Planets and stars have an interconnected journey. The interstellar space environment contains significant amounts of hydrogen gas and dust particles, along with small amounts of other gases. Due to gravity, some parts of this interstellar medium become denser than others as particles attract each other and create clouds. As the density of such clouds increases, atoms begin to collide more often and create even larger molecules. This includes water formed on dust particles.
When were stars formed?
Stars are formed when certain parts of the collapsing cloud hit a certain density and then heat up to the point where they begin to fuse hydrogen atoms together. It’s important to note that initially only a small portion of the gas collapses into the newborn protostar. The remaining dust and gas create a flattened disk of material orbiting the newborn star. In the world of astronomy, this is called a protoplanetary disk.
When inside a protoplanetary disk, icy dust particles collide with each other, they begin to clump together. This process repeats itself over and over until it eventually produces familiar objects such as comets, asteroids, and planets.
Theories behind water sources
How water exists in our solar system remains a mystery to many people. There are many theories behind the origin of water, one of which is the chemical genetic theory. This theory states that chemical succession takes place when water molecules formed in the medium of interstellar space are transferred to protoplanetary disks along with the formed objects without any changes. any other change.
Another theory that tells us something about the origin of water is the chemical reset theory. When the protoplanetary disk is formed, heat is released. This heat and the water molecules released when a newborn star breaks up are what cause water to form.
How are such theories tested?
The ratio is drawn between the water we use normally and the semi-heavy water (a special type of water). We all know that water is made up of two components; two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. However, it is interesting to note that semi-heavy water is made up of one hydrogen atom, one oxygen atom, and one deuterium atom. Deuterium is essentially a heavy isotope of hydrogen with an extra neutron in the nucleus.
The ratio of this amount of semi-heavy water to the amount of water we normally have actually sheds light on the water trail. This ratio says a lot about the water source.
Speaking of chemical modeling experiments, the results of such experiments suggest that about 1,000 times more semi-heavy water would be formed in the colder interstellar medium. It was not formed in the state of a protoplanetary disk.
By finding the ratio between semi-heavy water and normal water, astronomers evaluate whether chemical succession or chemical reset took place to form water.
How much water was there at the time of a planet’s formation?
Chemical inheritance is probably what happened in the case of comets, since they have a ratio of semi-heavy water to normal water that actually fits the theory. This means that in such a case, the water has not undergone any significant chemical changes in the first place, since it was first formed in space.
Talking about our own blue planet i.e. Earth, the ratio of semi-heavy water and normal water is somewhere between the legacy ratio and the reset ratio. This makes figuring out where the water actually comes from a bit of a puzzle.
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Source: pagasa.edu.vn