Genesis Of Water

Life on Earth is the result of several fascinating coincidences, of which the presence of water is considered the most important. But we are still not sure where this water came from.

- Shreeshan Venkatesh

This excerpt of a hymn from Hinduism’s most sacred texts represents one of humankind’s earliest written inquiries into how Earth was formed and how all life came to be. Like other religious texts, it attributes the creation of water to some inexplicable divine force. And yet, one cannot miss the uncanny reference to scientific phenomena we have come to research or accept today. Written around 4,000 years ago, the poem recognises water as the prerequisite for creation of all life on Earth and alludes to an immense source of heat or energy from which water arose. Most of all, it also speculates that water existed right from the beginning of Earth’s formation, a possibility scientists are still investigating today.

It is true that without water, Earth would have been a dead, desolate planet, much like its closest sibling, Mars. Water is one of the most abundant compounds on Earth and influences almost every natural cycle on the planet. The adult human body is itself around 60 per cent water. Yet, the question of how we came to be in possession of this miracle compound remains.

Water as ET

School textbooks say water is extra-terrestrial. It was brought to Earth by meteors from passing comets which, when they struck Earth, became meteorites. Such bombardment was frequent when Earth was still being formed more than 4.5 billion years ago. To reach this conclusion, scientists hypothesised that in the moments after the Big Bang, when galaxies with solar systems and planets were being formed, scorching temperatures would have rendered it impossible for Earth to retain any water. Hence, water must have come from outer space as projectiles from comets (snowballs of frozen gases, rock and dust). Around 80 per cent of all the water in the world was thought to have come this way. This remained a widely accepted theory until advancements in scientific research indicated other possibilities.