Posted on 11/01/2025 6:27:35 AM PDT by Red Badger
Scientists have recreated the conditions inside a young planet, with magma and hydrogen, and uncovered a surprising way water might form.
In the early chaos of planetary formation, before crusts cooled or atmospheres settled, water might already have been bubbling into existence. Not from icy comets or far-flung asteroids, but from the blistering union of magma and hydrogen gas.
That’s the picture emerging from a new study led by Carnegie Science researchers, who’ve managed to reproduce the extreme conditions of young rocky planets in a lab. Their results suggest that planets may be able to make their own water, deep down, right from the start.
Planetary scientists have toyed with it for years, but until now, no one had solid experimental proof. This time, they didn’t just model it. They made it happen.
Lab-built Planets And A Decades-old Mystery
To recreate what happens inside a newborn planet, scientists combined a molten, iron-rich silicate melt, a stand-in for a magma ocean, with molecular hydrogen. That hydrogen represents the thick, gassy atmospheres that tend to wrap around young rocky planets, especially those forming in gas-rich disks.
Samples were squeezed to nearly 60 gigapascals (for reference, that’s about 600,000 times Earth’s surface pressure) and heated beyond 4,000°C. According to Earth.com, these intense conditions mimic the deep interiors of still-molten planets wrapped in thick hydrogen envelopes.
And the chemistry checked out. Hydrogen was absorbed into the molten material, and water was created through reactions between the hydrogen and iron oxides in the melt.
“We showed that a copious amount of hydrogen is dissolved into the melt and significant quantities of water are created,” said lead researcher Francesca Miozzi.
The experiments were carried out under the AEThER project, a collaborative effort bringing together astronomers, petrologists, cosmochemists, and mineral physicists to answer some deceptively simple questions about what makes a planet habitable.
New laboratory research reveals that water can form naturally as planets take shape, without needing external sources. Credit: Navid Marvi/Carnegie Science
Water From Within—Not Delivered
The findings offer a new explanation for something scientists have puzzled over for decades: where Earth’s water actually came from. The popular theories, like water arriving via comets or being trapped in the mantle, don’t fully account for all of it. Now, there’s another possibility: maybe it formed right here, during Earth’s infancy.
According to the AEThER team, it could apply to any rocky planet that begins life wrapped in a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and swimming in the liquid rock. That setup, it turns out, is far from rare.
Hydrogen doesn’t just make water in this scenario, it also changes how the planet evolves. It affects the density of the molten material, how it cools, and how its core separates from the mantle. All of that, in turn, can shape what kind of atmosphere the planet ends up with, or if it keeps one at all. Anat Shahar, co-lead on the project, emphasized the bigger picture:
“This work demonstrates that large quantities of water are created as a natural consequence of planet formation.” It’s not just a one-off mechanism, it’s potentially foundational.
Composite chemical maps from two samples: left shows a lower-pressure example, right shows a higher-pressure one. Credit: Nature
The Hidden Oceans Of Distant Worlds
Now, zoom out to the galaxy. The most common type of planet in the Milky Way? Sub-Neptunes, rocky worlds with thick hydrogen atmospheres early in their lives. According to Earth.com, those are precisely the kinds of planets this chemistry could affect.
If their hydrogen atmospheres are later blasted away by starlight, what’s left could be a smaller, water-bearing super-Earth. And the water? Already waiting inside, formed long ago in a molten ocean. This perspective might change how astronomers interpret exoplanet data. A planet that looks dry or lifeless today could have a deeply watery past, hidden below the surface or locked in minerals.
The problem for most planets is not producing water but keeping it from disappearing after being produced
Again our planet is a miracle
I saw the headline and clicked on the thread knowing there would be a Dr. Evil pic in the first 10 replies :)
Well, that is the Reader’s Digest version. LOL
Comet
It will make your teeth turn green
Comet
It tastes like gasoline
Comet
It will make you vomit
So get some Comet, and vomit, today!
Another great thread!
The theory that Earth’s water came from asteroids and comets seems to have originated from a collection of politically liberal scientists. James Hansen was a planetary atmosphere expert before he became a climate change nut. They push this water-from-comets idea to promote their precious panspermia, that life came from comets. They are Darwinists and Atheists. They don’t believe in God and reject the overwhelming evidence for intelligent design.
The evidence is clear that our oceans are primordial, outgassed from volcanoes as the Earth cooled. Earth’s early atmosphere was mostly carbon dioxide, nitrogen and water vapor, a lot of water vapor (~100 bars). When Earth’s atmosphere cooled to saturation vapor pressure, all of that water in vapor form rained out to form the oceans.
Natural gas (CH4) is also primordial, it was here from the beginning. Large caches of natural gas formed as the Earth cooled. Natural gas hydrates are found at the bottom of the oceans, on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, even detected on exoplanets.
That is of significant significance! A game changer, for sure.
There were common sense laws against sparks in those times.
Not me. I out-gas it soon after formation.
So to colonize the Moon and Mars all that is needed is hydrogen to react with the oxides in the soil.
My God! I haven’t heard that in decades! You win the thread, hands down.
Hydrogen. That’s the trick.
Brave AI:
Water has been confirmed on the Moon in multiple forms and locations, challenging earlier assumptions that the lunar surface was completely dry. The most significant discovery is the presence of water molecules (H₂O) in sunlit areas of the Moon, a finding confirmed by NASA using the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA).
This detection, first announced in 2020, revealed water concentrations of 100 to 412 parts per million in a cubic meter of soil—equivalent to about a 12-ounce bottle of water—primarily in regions like Clavius Crater in the Moon’s southern hemisphere.
These water molecules are not in liquid or ice form but are chemically bound within the lunar soil, likely formed through interactions between solar wind protons and oxygen-bearing minerals.
In addition to water in sunlit regions, substantial amounts of water ice are found in permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) at the Moon’s poles, where temperatures can drop to -250°C (-418°F), preventing evaporation.
These PSRs, which never receive direct sunlight, are believed to have preserved water ice for billions of years, possibly delivered by comets and asteroids or originating from Earth during the Moon’s formation.
Estimates suggest over 600 billion kilograms of water ice may exist in these regions, enough to fill at least 240,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
The presence of water on the Moon has significant implications for future exploration. Water ice could be used to produce breathable air, drinking water, and rocket propellant, making long-term lunar habitation more feasible.
NASA’s upcoming missions, including the VIPER rover and the PRIME-1 ice-mining experiment launched on February 27, 2025, aim to assess the usability of water ice in the southern polar region.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and other missions have also identified micro-cold traps—small craters within PSRs—that may increase the total amount of accessible water ice by 10 to 20 percent.
While water molecules are now known to exist on sunlit surfaces, they are present in extremely low concentrations—about 100 times drier than the Sahara Desert—and are not in a form suitable for direct consumption.
The discovery of water in such harsh, sunlit environments suggests a dynamic process involving solar wind interactions and micrometeorite impacts, which release water vapor that can then become trapped in the regolith.
This ongoing cycle of water movement across the lunar surface further underscores the Moon’s complex and active geochemistry.
AI-generated answer. Please verify critical facts.
Plenty of water and oxygen on Mars..............
Another remnant of the demise of another solar system..............ad infinitum...........
I remember being taught as a child that crude came from 'fossils' and I never accepted it.
Decades later when I read about depleted Texas wells 'recharging' it was a small vindication for the mocking I received for diverging from the groupthink long before I understood the gravity of any of the bs present even back then.
Water from Magma and comets are both valid theories and probably correct. What is in doubt is what percentage did each contribute.
“The comet theory always struck me as lazy.”
It was pretty clever, actually. But spend some time in the Pacific and then ask yourself how many comets that would take, even over billions of years. That ocean is DAMN BIG.
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