Have you ever wondered how our oceans were formed? Maybe you’ve never thought how important our oceans are to life? Simply without them we wouldn’t exist or any other life.
As a yachtsman and my love for sailing and having crossed the Atlantic ocean its been on my mind for some time how we have such an amazing liquid planet?
I know there is one hypothesis that during the heavy bombardment phase of our solar system ice meteorites and ice asteroids from the outer Kuiper belt came slamming into early earths surface.
This violent phase of ice projectiles constantly colliding into earth exploding and re-ejected debris as water vapour then to ice again above the planet. The ice particles being pulled back by down through gravitational pull and recondensing into thick cloud followed by intense rains over eons creating our great oceans. (But I dont think that ice meterorites would of created enough liquid water to form the great oceans)
However I have a different theory which has been seriously considered by scientist which is the called the Thea hypothesis.
In the early stages of the creation of our solar system a planet the size of Mars collided with earth head on. From the accretion debris it coalesced through gravity reconfigured Earth and produced our Moon creating our unique binary planetary system.
My own theory is our solar system is quite a rarity due to how the giant gas planets were formed (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune ) which are mostly of hydrogen and helium the constituents of our Sun.
Jupiter which just outside the asteroid belt and the frost line has 79 moons but the largest 4 moons are; Europa, Ganymeade, Io and Callisto. Ganymeade is the largest and its 8% larger than Mercury. It’s the ninth largest object in the solar system.
The amazing thing about Ganymeade is its made up equal amount of silicate rock and water ice. It has a iron rich liquid core and an internal liquid ocean with more water than earth and a thin oxygen atmosphere. Now you might be thinking well what’s Ganymeade got to do with earth and our liquid oceans?
The Grand Tack theory of Jupiter which created the uniqueness of our solar system. The Grand Tack metaphor which is poignant as its associated with a sailing term.
Tacking is when you head through the wind from either the port or the starboard side of the boat.
My hypothesis is during the solar systems early formation, Jupiter went for a meander. It migrated from the ice line in towards the sun and back out again to its present location. Saturn the next gas giant had an effect on Jupiter’s migration due to the change in the planets resonance to a stable 2:5. Period( which is to do with orbital periods between two planets, basically resonance helps to stabilise their orbits. 2:5 is first order resonance and is very stable). Planets settle down into stable resonance phases of orbits around the sun.
Jupiter migration would of dragged its moons along with it and a possible Ganymeade size ice moon slammed into earth when Jupiter was on its grand tack. Granymeade type moon with its iron rich liquid core its liquid salt water oceans and surface ice layer and thin atmosphere of oxygen evaporated after the Earth collision. The debris surrounded earth as an accretion disc of ice particles. Gravity pulled down most of the ice particles back towards Earth and the remaining debris formed the Moon.
The ice particles of salt water and percentage of the oxygen was pulled back into Earths gravity field and condensed into a thick clouds formations that totally covered the planet. These thick clouds produced a deluge of rain of millions upon millions litres of water to form Earths great Oceans and in the process produced the abundance of life we have today.
I remember reading a very interesting book written by a number of physicists saying that life as we know happened purely by chance? Or was it a chance happening? Maybe we’re totally unique in the cosmos? So we Homosipiens need to take care of our planet earth. Just maybe we are here for the special purpose is to understand and explore the cosmos.
https://youtu.be/yXq1i3HlumAhttps://youtu.be/nsGRvnPL95Ihttps://youtu.be/lWfEl25kN-Yhttps://youtu.be/MMpDaacrlso