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>>> Why wouldn't water be one of the by products of the big-bang To address the first part of your question – The Big Bang (which happened 13.8 billion years a
by tomr_stargazer 12y ago
>>> Why wouldn't water be one of the by products of the big-bang
To address the first part of your question –
The Big Bang (which happened 13.8 billion years ago) created ~only hydrogen and helium. So, no water existed in the early Universe (a) because there were no oxygen atoms formed in the Big Bang and (b) the early Universe was too hot to form water molecules even if oxygen was present.
>>> during Earth's creation?
Whether water was present on the Earth from "day one" of its formation (~5 billion years ago, much later than the Big Bang) is still an open question, but part of why it might be unlikely is that the Earth is close enough to the Sun that it was too hot for water to stay as ice or liquid on Earth's surface (before Earth's atmosphere formed). Water that forms in comets (further away from the Sun) doesn't have that problem, as comets would be in colder parts of the early Solar System.
- Datsundere 12y agoWasn't our sun a product of a bigger star? Which is why we have the planets now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_nucleosynthesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_nucleosynthesis. Nucleosynthesis says that at the end of the life of a star, heavier elemnts are formed as a byproduct.
- ubernostrum 12y agoNucleosynthesis gets you the heavier elements, but doesn't get around the "too hot to hold water" problem in Earth's early history.
- tomr_stargazer 12y agoYes, the heavy elements in our Solar System were formed inside previous generations of stars.
- flavien_bessede 12y agoSo what happened between the Big Bang and Earth formation? For some reason I always thought they were one and the same.
- quantumet 12y agoQuite a lot; see for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_timeline_of_the_universe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_timeline_of_the_unive...
- MartinCron 12y agoCome on downvoters, it's a naive question, but not the sort of thing that needs to be punished...
- aptwebapps 12y agoCRC's GED prep book used to contain this error. Most of the book was good but the "Earth Science" section looked like it had been deliberately mangled in order to discredit opponents of creationism. Or that was my theory, anyway, it was pretty bad.
- coldpie 12y agoThe Big Bang was the formation of the entire universe. About ten billion years later, our solar system, and eventually the Earth, started forming due to gravity pulling various bits of matter together. Ten billion years is a really, really long time! The two events are completely separate. If you're interested in cosmology, there are a ton of fascinating popular science books on the topic, and research is very active and ongoing. As an introduction, I recommend Cosmos by Carl Sagan. It's a bit outdated these days, but the main points hold and it's a fascinating read from start to finish. Alternatively, if you prefer video, check out Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey with Neil deGrasse Tyson. It's an up-to-date retelling of Sagan's original idea.
- mkertajaya 12y agoIf you want to learn more, this is a valuable resource: https://www.bighistoryproject.com/ https://www.bighistoryproject.com/ .
- lmm 12y agoTwo generations of stars, including heavy stars that produced all the elements up to iron (including, relevant to this particular case, oxygen), and then became supernovae, which a) produced traces of heavier elements b) blew a lot of stellar material out into the universe, to become part of new star systems. So there was oxygen around by the time Earth was formed (~4.5 billion years ago, as opposed to ~14 billion for the big bang).
- ajuc 12y agoBut even if it ws too hot for liquid water the gravity of forming Earth would keep it as gas just as well as if it was liquid?