Earth had watery beginning, according to articles in New Scientist 6 Nov 2010, p12 and Chemical Communications DOI: 10.1039/C0CC02312D. According to Nora de Leeuw of University College London and colleagues, “The presence of water in the Earth has long been an enigma.” The current theory of how the earth formed is that it started out as a disc of hot dust around the sun that eventually coalesced into the planet. This dust must have been extremely hot, and any water associated with it would be vaporised, so the early earth was “bone dry” and water was delivered to it by asteroids and comets later on.
To see if the original earth dust could have contained water de Leeuw’s team created a computer model of olivine dust grains, which have fractal, or fluffy, surfaces. Olivine is a common mineral in the solar system and in dusty nebulae in outer space. The model showed the dust grains should be able to hold onto water at temperatures up to 630°C, implying the dust grains hold on water “is sufficiently strong to provide a viable origin of terrestrial water.” Fred Ciesla of the University of Chicago commented that the computer model indicates water was present in earth’s raw materials, but was not the only source. “The key for us now may be figuring how much water was brought in by the different mechanisms.” New Scientist headed their article “Earth may have had water from day one” and started it with this statement: “In the beginning, there was water.”
Editorial Comment: New Scientist is right – there was water from day one, but we don’t need a computer simulation of hot olivine dust to work that out. A much better way of finding out whether there was water at the beginning is to consult the evidence of the Creator who was there. Genesis 1 tells us the earth was created covered in water. Genesis reports that the Spirit of the Creator God hovered over this water (Genesis 1:2). However, this water was not superhot vapour that had to cool down over millions of years. This water is referred to as “the deep” i.e. the ocean, and by day three God had separated it from dry land, making the earth ready for the living things to inhabit it. The only reason the source of water on earth is “an enigma” is because modern scientists are fulfilling a prophecy made by the Apostle Peter, who wrote that scoffers would come and deliberately ignore the fact “the earth was created out of water and through water by the word of God.” (2 Peter 3:2-5) (Ref. hydrology, hydrosphere)
Evidence News 24 Nov 2010