Water loss from earth

From what I've always understood, virtually every drop of water that has ever been here, is still here (with the exception of astronaut waste or water that's been converted in scientific experiments into constituent parts, etc) - and I don't think evaporation could take place outside of (e.g., 'above') the atmosphere.

So my guess is NO, there is no significant loss of water off the planet.

Correction, though, is welcomed if necessary.

I am agreed!

OK, from what I've researched I think you are right. But where did the water come from originally? The "Big Bang" fused 2 hydrogen and one oxygen atom and that's been it for 4B years??

Think of it as caveman urine

God created it, duh...

I believe water will cool down and condense before it reached space, in which then it would fall back to Earth as rain.

Remember our old school thought, "energy can neither be created nor destroyed but can be transformed from one form to another". If God created it, then, it remains and only get recycled.

It was the tears of GOD shed in happiness as he witnessed his creation "EARTH". Just look at the heavenly photos from space of earth and tell me that you don't well up.

Your comment would have been ok, but I can not fathom any reason why God would shed tears when all He created were ok and beautiful in their on course.

Some of it might have come from comets crashing into the Earth.

No

correct me if I'm wrong, but does water and water vapour have a mass and to get any mass into space it would require the mass to reach an escape velocity which does not happen naturally.

Needs no correction.

When the earth was first formed it was pretty hot and I would imagine that only in the atmosphere could any water vapour stay around so to say, but not the massive amount that we have today. The burning of fuels with hydrogen in them forms water of course....

Somewhere I read that the earth has also "gathered" water vapor from space ever since as water vapor can exist as vast thin clouds in space - burnt hydrogen etc......

It appears that the earth is doing a damn good job of collection too I must say!!! probably now is a good time to stop before we all need to grow skin between the toes!!!

Hi Andy.

There is a heck of a lot of water locked into the rocks that make up our planet, also there is a goup of minerals called "Zeolites", these all hold water within them, but are not part of their crystal structure. eg. Mesolite (Na2 Ca2 Al6 Si9 O30. 8H2O), this water is contained within large voids within their crystal structure.

As the Zeolites are a common mineral there must be a vast amount of water that is not accounted for?

Then there is the OH radicle, this is usually part of the chemical make up of most minerals, eg Topaz (Al2 SiO4 (OH, F)2. So there is a vast amount of water other than the oceans, seas, rivers and clouds that is normally not counted.

Spencer.

I believe the geologists have studied this topic and theorized that the water comes from the decomposition of the rocks and related chemical reactions. As to whether the water evaporates from the earth and goes into space, physical chemistry tells us that the vapor pressure of a material is a direct function of temperature; higher temperatures yield higher vapor pressures. Given the low absolute temperature of space, virtually no water vapor would be expected to exist at higher elevations. Besides, any water that does get to fairly high elevations (such as Mt Everest) freezes into a solid (snow). Even at these elevations it is under the influence of gravity and returns to earth.

I think gravity best sums up this argument. That being the case, apply the same logic to the gasses contained in our atmosphere. I heard that Hydrogen was light! No pun intended. Another question; how about all the H and O containing compounds that have been shot into space. Does the occasional meteorite subsidize these missing elements?

No one in this thread has explained the uniqueness of water on earth - as opposed to the rest of our solar system.

Bobguz

The presence of water in our solar system is not unique to earth. Europa! commets etc.

I'm sure it exists as ice on other planets also. Someone better informed may be able to comment on this?

Hi Jonny5.

I am glad you brought that up, why do so may people think that the Earth is unique? After all there are countless billions of suns and there has to be even more billions of plants circling a lot of them?

Water, or it's constituents happens to be the most abundent substance in our known universe, here on the Earth oxygen makes up 50% by weight of the whole planet! Hydrogen happens to be 1% by weight of our planet!

Then there are the vast clouds of hydrogen observed in outer space? So Water has to be an abundant substance in our universe???

Spencer.

Mars

Perhaps what BobGuz meant was the uniqueness of LIQUID water - I'm not up on the latest NASA findings, but as far as I know, the Earth is the only planet in the S/Syst. that we know has LIQUID water on it - and I suppose you could look at it like this - water in various forms may be present on several of the system's planets and/or moons - but Earth's distance from the sun, atmosphere and other factors combine to develop liquid water here - as opposed to, say the frozen ice on Europe or the clouds of sulphuric acid steam on Venus. Liquid water being one of the precursors to the development of life as we know it, life developed here as opposed to on Saturn or Venus.

Thanks, Jim.

Bobguz

There is no reason to believe that the earth is unique in having water. we know there is ice on on other planets and asteroids are ice and rock. The reason that we have water rather than ice or steam is due to our location in relation to the sun which is just one of countless stars in the universe. Of which we know very little. There is no reason to assume that earth is unique in this regard. In fact when you consider the billions of stars like our sun with orbiting planets it is extremely unlikely that we are unique at all. I would suspect that million's of planets have water and probably life on them as well. Unfortunately the distances involved make it extremely unlikely that we will ever really know. Next time there is a clear night with just a little moon get out of town lie on your back on a hill and just look at the stars. Think of how unlikely it is that there aren't other planets like ours out there

That's because we have no reason to believe it is unique!

"That's because we have no reason to believe it is unique."

Del, that's a very common sentiment on this thread. But I can't remember the name(s) of the other earth like planet(s). Give me some help, Del. Anyone...?

Bobguz

Just because you don't know their names (assuming some of them have names) is no reason to doubt their existence. There are billions of people on this planet, and I only know the names of a few hundred, or maybe a couple of thousand, but that doesn't mean the people I haven't met yet don't exist!

Look up into the night sky....each star is a sun, each may have planets orbiting it. We havn't explored any of them yet, but statistically one would expect some to be similar to ours....why wouldn't they be? Or if not similar to ours at this instant, maybe the y will be when they cool a bit, or if they are too cold, maybe they were when they were warmer. The earth as we know it is a mere snapshot of the planet's existence. That's wher people go wrong wondering why we don't get contacted by aliens...maybe there are plenty ou there...but not at the same time as us and not in the same place . The universe is, I believe, rather big!

It's a bit like naming one specific individual out of all the people who have ever lived and wondering how come you havn't met them.

Del and DK,

I know it's popular to say, "Gee! There are so many stars some of them must have a planet just like ours." But that ain't necessarily so. Planets astronomers think they have found orbiting nearby stars seem quite different than planet earth. And if this thread has proved one thing it's that educated scientists and engineers don't know a lot, for certain, about our planet's natural history.

Bobguz

As I understand it, the techniques currently available to astronomers do not allow them to "see" planets as small as ours as close to stars like our sun as we are. It was only a few years ago that there was no proof of the existence of any planets outside our solar system. There are now several hundred 'known' planets. I have no doubt that as our ability to detect smaller planets improves, we will be able to detect planets more like our own. If you think about the differences between the several planets of our own solar system , there has to be a much wider variation than we can conceive of in planets of other solar systems.

I don't see what any of this has to do with knowledge of 'our planet's natural history'. Maybe with our planet's future...

But that ain't necessarily so.

Very true.... but I think I said 'statistically' not 'necessarilly'.

It's not necessarilly going to rain in the UK during December.....

'And if this thread has proved one thing it's that educated scientists and engineers don't know a lot, for certain, about our planet's natural history.'

???? Dunno how you work that one out!!!!

No...what it show is that we don't know much about the planet Tharg.

Del

Your mind should be like a parachute, it needs to be open before it works.

Read these articles and then reconsider your somewhat "out of date" understanding of the issue.

http://www.astrobio.net/news/Topic9.html

This page by the way, came up on 3rd spot of a google search stating "new planets"

Readily available to all. What I mean is that if you turn around and argue with somebodies statement, you should first see if you could be wrong instead of them.

No flame intended, just some sound advice

For understanding the origin of water on Earth, try this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_world's_oceans

I don't think that a planet can lose ANY of its substance unless it collides with something big or having enough kinetic energy for sending back to space the fringes of a crater.

After exceeding a critical mass and stabilizing on a solar orbit, the Earth is gaining mass every second as gravity (as we know it) is just attraction. Among other materials, water too.

The invoked vapor pressure (better said the atmospheric pressure at all altitudes) is also a consequence of gravity.

"The invoked vapor pressure (better said the atmospheric pressure at all altitudes) is also a consequence of gravity."

NO! The vapor pressure is due to the kinetic energy of molecules; the momentum of a molecule must change when it strikes another molecule or a wall of the container. That change in momentum requires a force, which when applied over a surface means pressure. This pressure will exist whether or not there is any significant gravity. Gravity does cause a difference (slight unless it is a very large container, such as a hot-air balloon) in pressure between the top and bottom of a container of gas or vapor.

Taking the earth as a whole, the 'container' is gravity. Any molecule that happens to be moving outward will be slowed by gravity just like a rock thrown upward, and soon come back down. As someone else pointed out, no water molecules have anywhere near the escape velocity, so no water molecules escape.

Influences outside of earth, solar wind being one such entity, can rob our atmosphere of elements... If not for our magnetosphere our planet would be a desolate rock.

From http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast08dec98_1.htm

"The polar auroral fountain sprays ions - oxygen, helium, and hydrogen - from Earth's upper ionosphere into deep space. The loss is miniscule compared to the immense ocean of air covering our world, but is significant in terms of what drives space weather around our world. (NASA)"

All the hydrogen in our and other solar systems is thought to come from the big bang but all elements above helium are thought to have been synthesised in a subsequent supernova.

The supernovas blow some of their material into space at high velocities where it hits interstellar dust clouds and is compressing these and mixing with the dust.

The compression is the first step into gravitational star formation and the remaining dust from the star formation is giving birth to the planets.

After planet formation there was a period of high intensity meteoritic material influx onto earth until the orbit and any other conflicting orbits were cleaned.

These events brought our water to earth. It took a long time for earth to cool down so that rain could start - immediately reevaporising in the first millions of years - and then filling up the first oceans.

No oxygen in the atmosphere existed at that time for some mor billion years to come until the bluegreen algae invented fotosynthesis to generate some oxygen that was immediately reused to oxidise many of the existing minerals.

Nowadays there is some material coming in from space as meteors - most not seen as too tiny to give any light, just like dust showers of material, some of this icy some containing attached water.

And we loose some oxygen and water by diffusion, by the solar wind, by nearby passing meteors that can escape and a very little gone with the astronauts and as dissolved water in the materials of satellites and some used in plasma cleaning of optics and solar panels from the condensed outgassing of the satellites that would be otherwise polymerised by the ultraviolet radiation.

We will not loose enough to run into trouble for the next many million of years.

Also the big impacts that are discussed to be an imminent danger will not carry away too much (but much more than any other event.)

Don't worry, be happy.

RHABE

No need to worry about water loos from Earth ... but one day Earth may be a steaming bath because most of the water will be in the air and not on the ground.

At very high altitudes the water vapour molecules are often disassociated into Oxygen and hydrogen by the intense solar radiation.

There is, of course re-combination, but inevitably some of the hydrogen escapes the earth's gravity.

There is a nett mass gain to the earth, of between 400 and 1000 tons each day, because of micro-meteors and cometary particles, most of which are smaller than a few millimetres across.

As many cometary heads are composed of water ice, there is a nett gain, over time, of water to the beautiful planet we live on.

There are 2 kinds of numbers that always draw my attention.

Small and big numbers.

The earth's mass is 5.9736×10²⁴ kg

You are stating between 400 and 1000 ton each day as an increase. Lets take the mean average which is 700x10³

In the earths age of 4.5x10⁹ years of existence we would have gained 1.14975x10¹⁸

Kg.

If we assume we would not have lost anything it stands to reason that if you deduct these 2 figures you will end up with the earths start weight.

This ends up as 5.97359885x10²⁴ Kg which shows me that this theory is entirely possible.

Wonderful how a working brain and some dodgy maths always clean up the mess.

I started out thinking this large mass gain would show us to have started out as a tennis ball sized pebble but it is very deceptive. This old rock is heavy man and always has been

Very interesting observation, my friend. When you say "700 tons a day" to someone, they imagine a rather large lump of something - but, as you've noted, 700 tons a day added to the earth's mass, even over 4.5 billion years, has not amounted to a great deal, in comparison. Kinda makes you wonder about all the hub-bub over styrofoam cups in landfills, doesn't it...

Unfortunately we may not be correct in assuming the accretion of mass to the planet Earth has been constant over time.

Also, if all other things are equal and constant, as the mass of Planet Earth increased over time, its gravity field would increase with the increasing mass, thus drawing in increasing mass faster and faster, from space debris, cometary particles etc.

I know of no way to determine the "original mass of the Planet Earth" by working backwards.

Perhaps the only way to find out, is to ask the Creator, when we meet Him face to face.....

Hey Sparky- congrats on your rotating Earth pic0- I understood that Earth through it,s travels through the solar system periodically encountered clouds of water, which enters the upper atmosphere- said to be tonnes- NASA is said to have photographic proof- this would balance the loss - the system must be homostasis- or we would have changing weather- climate- what do we have at present? If you see GOD before I do, please ask IT for an answer- & please let the rest of us know- most of us would like to know the TRUTH- not just our simple-minded guesses!.

We do not need to run into clouds of water to balance the loss AS WE DO NOT LOOSE ANYTHING.

Any clouds of water, even if alleged, would only add to our mass. The amount we loose due to refraction of atoms in the outer regions of our atmosphere is due to radiation and is negligible compared to the mass we have or the increase we have.

If you speak of simple minded guesses, I would like to be excluded. I do not believe we are just simply guessing, I think we are reasoning and excluding possibilities to arrive at a point of better understanding.

Several further observations comrade,

4.5 billion years ago the space around us had much more debris floating around therefor it is better to suggest that we collected more in the earlier years than now.

Also if we on the one hand conclude that the earths mass has not been altered as much by 700 tons a day over 4.5 billion years, why do you suddenly think that this increase is going to pull more debris in towards us and speed up the collection of material?

I don't see your logic in these aspects.

I do not disagree with you that all this is guess work except for the fact that they have monitored incoming mass to quite an accurate extend.

I see this excercise as poking fun at the subject as it is not realy all that relevant. Just keep the grey mass working that is all.

"I see this excercise as poking fun at the subject as it is not realy all that relevant. Just keep the grey mass working that is all."

Amen

Case491, I quite enjoy your contributions but may I ask you this? What effect has the gain in weight or mass of the earth on its revolution and rotation since ages past? It is clear that a consistent gain or loss in weight should have had a significant effect on the speed (rotation) over time which should have reflected in the day lenght and seasons.

And you are absolutely correct. We have scientific evidence in the way of measurements and fossil records that our day and year length has not always been as it is today and is in fact still changing ever so minutely.

The problem is in the word significant. We did our little live calculation of the daily gain and noticed that it was not even knocking the decimal point out and only changed the figure somewhere down the 5th or 6th digit in the range. That is not significant weight change therefor the day length change is not significant. The total figure had 25 digits in total and that is some number.

Please realise that if the earths time line would be compressed into a year from beginning to right now, we would only have entered in the last couple of minutes of that entire year. The fact we have not noticed in our lifetime suddenly becomes a bit clearer now.

The word significant also comes into its element if you consider that the meteor explosion in the sixties above north Russia somewhere, still has a measurable effect on the earths spin in the way of a wobble that we only measured since they put mirrors on the moons surface. We than pointed lasers up to those mirrors and measured that there was a very small undulating motion in the earths rotation. I have not got the slightest idea how they linked it with that meteor but they seem very certain of themselves. I am afraid I have to draw my personal line there as I don't understand the maths they use to prove it. I just take solace from the fact that some say that knowing ones limits, is the first step on the ladder to wisdom.

An interesting statistical thing to drop into a lull in a conversation at a dinner party is:

For each drink of water you have, most of it has been through the kidneys of other persons and animals, several times.

Glass of water anyone....