Origin of the Oceans

Can we think of life without water? It is said that Water is Life. Water is an essential component of all life forms that exist over the surface of the earth. Water is a rare commodity in our solar system. The earth, fortunately has an abundant supply of water on its surface. Hence, our planet is called ‘Blue Planet’.

So, Let’s discuss about the processes that helped our planet in the formation of the oceans:

Ocean

Evolution of Atmosphere

The early atmosphere, with hydrogen and helium, is supposed to have been stripped off as a result of the solar winds. Due to this, Earth had lost its primordial atmosphere through the impact of solar winds. By this, earth’ atmosphere cooled and gases and water vapour rises upward from the interior of the surface.

Solar winds remove primordial atmosphere of the Earth

Process by which Oceans are formed

During the cooling of the earth, gases and water vapour were released from the interior solid earth. This started the evolution of the present atmosphere. The early atmosphere largely contained water vapour, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia and little of free oxygen. The process through which the gases were outpoured from the interior is called degassing. Continuous volcanic eruptions contributed water vapours and gases to the atmosphere. As the earth cooled, the water vapour released started getting condensed. This condensed water particles fell on the surface in the form of rainfalls. The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere got dissolved in rainwater and the temperature further decreased causing more condensation and more rains. The rainwater falling onto the surface got collected in the depressions to give rise to oceans.

Volcanic eruption outpoured water vapours and gases into atmosphere.

The earth’s oceans were formed within 500 million years from the formation of the earth. This tells us that the oceans are as old as 4,000 million years.

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Read our other articles :

Structure of the earth.

Origin of the universe.