RE: Earth may have underground 'ocean' three times that on surface
June 26, 2014 at 12:42 pm
(This post was last modified: June 26, 2014 at 12:46 pm by Cyberman.)
(June 26, 2014 at 1:16 am)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Do you have any idea how many comets it would have taken to bring all of the water to Earth? You guys are insane! The Earth makes its own damn water as well as its own gases and petroleum.
I don't think anyone is arguing that it either has to be one or the other (well, apart from you, obviously). It could be and most likely was both. Considering that hydrogen is far and away the most abundant element in the Universe, with the next most abundant reactive element, oxygen, coming in third (the second most abundant, helium, is chemically inert), it would be more surprising if proto-Earth didn't produce the stuff. Comets (ie the boring, bog-standard variety as distinct from the magic ones) still played their part. The Solar System is a shooting gallery; the formative one consideraly and quite insanely so. Cometary colliisions can and do happen - we've actually seen it.
You seem to be under the impression that we're saying first there was the Earth, and then the comets came with their water delivery. If so, you're neglecting the very real fact that protoplanetary collisions are how planets are actually formed. It's not that these comets slammed into the Earth - for the most part, they became the Earth.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
