Earth may have formed more quickly than previously believed, assembling tiny millimeter-sized rocks in a short period of time rather than a prolonged process.
This discovery points out that water, essential for life, was not delivered to Earth by icy comets, but rather attracted to our young planet, absorbing it from the surrounding space environment.
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The new research presented suggests that, around 4.5 billion years ago, small dust particles present in the protoplanetary disk around the forming Sun would have been rapidly attracted and accumulated to form planets.
For the researchers, in the case of the Earth in formation, this ability to attract and accumulate material from the protoplanetary disk guaranteed the supply of water on our planet.
This discovery has significant implications for the search for life in other solar systems, indicating that the existence of watery and habitable planets may be more common than believed at the moment.
The results of this research were recently published in the journal Nature.
New theory redirects the origin of water on Earth
According to Martin Schiller, a geochemist at the University of Copenhagen and a member of the team responsible for the theory, there have been long debates about how planets form.
One of the earlier theories suggests that planets form gradually through the collision of bodies over a period of 100 million years. In this context, the presence of water on Earth would be the result of a random event.
According to Schiller, an example of a chance event would be the bombardment of the planet with icy comets during the final stages of their formation. He mentions that if this is how the Earth formed, then having water on our planet is a matter of great luck.
Furthermore, he claims this significantly reduces the chances of water on planets outside our solar system.
Based on preconceived knowledge, scientists have theorized that reducing dependence on chance increases the likelihood that other planets may have abundant water.
The new theory suggests that the presence of water on other celestial bodies may be more common than previously thought.
The team led by Professor Martin Bizzarro proposes that whenever an Earth-like planet is formed, the presence of water is inevitable.
This implies that in planetary systems with a planet orbiting a Sun-like star, there is a high probability of finding water if the planet is located at the proper distance.
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