[Rockhounds] Scientists find evidence that challenges theories of the origin of water on Earth

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

A team of researchers at the University of Oxford have uncovered crucial
evidence for the origin of water on Earth. Using a rare type of meteorite,
known as an enstatite chondrite, which has a composition analogous to that
of the early Earth (4.55 billion years ago), they have found a source of
hydrogen which would have been critical for the formation of water
molecules.

Crucially, they demonstrated that the hydrogen present in this material was
intrinsic, and not from contamination. This suggests that the material
which our planet was built from was far richer in hydrogen than previously
thought.

The findings, which support the theory that the formation of habitable
conditions on Earth did not rely on asteroids hitting Earth, have been
published <https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0019103525001356> in
the journal *Icarus.*.

Without hydrogen, a fundamental elemental building-block of water
<https://phys.org/tags/water/>, it would have been impossible for our
planet to develop the conditions to support life.

The origin of hydrogen, and, by extension, water, on Earth has been highly
debated, with many believing that the necessary hydrogen was delivered by
asteroids from outer space during Earth's first approximately 100 million
years. But these new findings contradict this, suggesting instead that
Earth had the hydrogen it needed to create water from when it first formed.

https://phys.org/news/2025-04-scientists-evidence-theories-earth.html