Earth may have created a substantial amount of its own water as the planet was forming, rather than relying entirely on comets, meteorites, or other objects to deliver it from space. New research published in Nature Geoscience suggests that chemical reactions between rocky pebbles and the hydrogen-rich atmosphere of the young Earth could have produced enormous quantities of water.
The discovery offers a new explanation for how our planet acquired one of the most important ingredients for life. It also raises the possibility that other rocky planets throughout the universe could generate water through similar processes, potentially making habitable worlds more common than previously thought.
Researchers at The University of New Mexico investigated this possibility by recreating some of the extreme conditions that existed during Earth’s formation. The study was led by graduate student Susmita Garai, along with Zachary Sharp, professor and director of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Peter Olson. Their experiments examined what happens when rocks containing iron react with hydrogen at extremely high temperatures.
“Previous ideas about the source of water to Earth rely on an external source, such as comets or meteorites. Here we show that virtually any Earth-sized planet should have water by this newly identified mechanism,” explained Sharp. “In order to evaluate the possibility of ‘pebble’ rain’ being a source of water, we needed to construct and execute some very challenging high-temperature experiments. Dr. Garai’s efforts paid off mightily, as she found that water is produced in just minutes in the high temperature environment of the Early Earth’s atmosphere.”
A New Explanation for the Origin of Earth’s Water
For decades, scientists have debated where Earth’s water originally came from. One prominent theory suggests that much of it was transported to the developing planet by icy material originating in the colder, more distant regions of the early solar system.
According to this explanation, water-rich objects, including small icy pebbles, traveled inward and eventually contributed to Earth’s water supply. However, researchers have struggled to fully explain how enough of this material could have reached our planet from such great distances. There are also unresolved questions about whether this delivery process accounts for Earth’s chemical composition.
The new study investigates a different route by which water could have appeared. Instead of arriving already contained in ice or other materials, water may have been produced directly through reactions involving the rocky ingredients that built Earth and the gases surrounding it.
During the planet’s earliest stages, countless small pieces of rock gradually came together to form a larger body. Scientists refer to this growth process as pebble accretion. As Earth gained mass, it could have accumulated a dense atmosphere containing large amounts of hydrogen, with temperatures and pressures far higher than those found on the planet today.
Under those conditions, rocky pebbles falling through the atmosphere could have triggered a remarkable chemical reaction. Hydrogen in the surrounding gas would react with iron oxide inside the silicate rocks, transforming the iron oxide into metallic iron while releasing water vapor.
Experiments Reveal Water Can Form in Minutes
To determine whether this process could actually occur, the researchers exposed samples of silicate rock to temperatures ranging from 1,200 to 1,400 degrees Celsius. They conducted experiments using flowing hydrogen gas and repeated the tests with helium to provide a comparison. Each experiment ran for between 15 minutes and three hours.
The results provided strong evidence that the proposed reaction works under these extreme conditions. When the rocks were heated in hydrogen, almost 80% of their iron oxide was transformed into metallic iron, with water vapor produced during the reaction.
In contrast, the researchers did not observe the same reaction when helium was used instead of hydrogen. This difference confirmed that hydrogen played a crucial role in generating the water.
The speed and scale of the reaction were especially striking. Although the scientists had expected some water to form, the results suggested that the process could have been far more productive than anticipated. When they extended their experimental findings to conditions on the early Earth, their calculations indicated that the mechanism might have generated hundreds of oceans’ worth of water.
“We had suspected and hoped that we would produce iron metal and water in our reduction experiments, but we really had no way of knowing how fast and how much. We were quite surprised to find that extrapolation of our work suggests that hundreds of oceans’ worth of water were likely produced in this way. Looking out over a large body of water, it is hard to imagine that that water may have been produced 4 ½ billion years ago in a hell-like atmosphere, but it very well may have,” said Sharp.
Earth’s Fiery Beginnings May Have Helped Create Its Oceans
These findings suggest that the conditions of Earth’s formation may have actively contributed to its water supply. Rather than being entirely dependent on water delivered from elsewhere in the solar system, the growing planet may have possessed the ingredients needed to manufacture water through its own chemical reactions.
The implications extend well beyond Earth. If rocky planets around other stars develop similarly hot, hydrogen-rich atmospheres during their formation, they might also produce substantial amounts of water as rocky material accumulates.
This possibility could have important consequences for understanding how common water is across the universe. A process that naturally occurs during the formation of Earth-sized planets would mean that obtaining water might not require the right icy objects to arrive from distant regions of a planetary system.
Could Other Earth-Like Planets Make Their Own Water?
The research also adds to growing interest in pebble accretion as an explanation for how planets form. Although the concept has gained attention relatively recently, it has already helped scientists address several longstanding questions about planetary development.
“The idea of pebble accretion is still relatively new. It’s only been around for the last decade. But it seems to solve many problems that exist with the existing paradigm for planet formation,” Sharp said. “And now we see that it also can explain why our planet is habitable. By extension, it is reasonable to expect that other Earth-sized bodies circling other stars would also have water and possibly life.”
There are still important uncertainties to resolve. While the experiments show that rocky material can generate water when exposed to hydrogen under conditions resembling those of the early Earth, they do not establish how much of our planet’s present water supply was actually produced this way. Additional research will be needed to determine the contribution of this mechanism compared with water delivered by comets, meteorites, and other sources.
Nevertheless, the findings reveal a potentially important process that may have shaped Earth billions of years ago. They also suggest that the ability to produce water could be built into the formation of rocky planets themselves, opening new possibilities for understanding where water, and perhaps life, might exist beyond our solar system.
