Earth is an incredibly watery world. While there are planets and moons in our Solar System that host much more liquid water than our Pale Blue Dot, our own planet remains particularly drenched with water – as some 71% of its surface is covered by oceans. Of course, this is not just a neat fun fact, but it is a great thing as water is truly a lifeline on our planet – wherever water can be found, there are traces of life too. Now, geologists have recently made an exciting new discovery that may help us to better understand the origin of the planet’s water and, even, life itself.
In recent times, it seems like each other day has brought forth a sensational science news that leaves our little minds in shock. From the sighting of a horrifying black hole pointing directly at us to the finding of a giant hole on the sun, and then the reappearance of a continent that had gone missing for 375 years – now, scientists are only beginning to realize that there’s an enormous sea hidden beneath the Earth’s crust.
The incredible water reservoir is located at 400 miles underground and is stored in rock named ‘ringwoodite’. The news was shared by researchers from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The amount of water held in this underground pool is supposedly three times the total volume of all of Earth’s oceans combined! This new discovery may even help to explain where the planet’s oceans and seas originally came from.
Presently, the prevailing idea is that Earth’s water was initially brought by asteroids and comets. Scientists have theorized that the early inner Solar System was too hostile to contain water due to the intense ultraviolet radiation coming from our younger sun which was strong enough to tear away hydrogen from water molecules. Therefore, it’s believed that the water ice in the planet formed much further out and the carrying objects then crashed into the cooler Earth and delivered us the delicate liquids.
These findings were laid out in the paper called ‘Dehydration melting at the top of the lower mantle’, published in 2014. The data was collected after geologists studied seismic activity beneath the planet’s surface and identified shockwaves in the area. This indicated that water was stored in the rock referred to as ringwoodite. Interestingly, if this rock contains just 1 percent water, then it would imply that there is more water below Earth than in its oceans!