Scientists who have long been puzzled by the origins of Earth’s water are beginning to believe it originated deep inside of the planet—just like the Bible describes.
Where did our planet’s water come from? This question remains a hotly-debated issue among geologists and astronomers, who concede that it is still largely a mystery. Evolutionists who believe the Earth was originally a hot molten sphere abounding with toxic gases have struggled to make sense of the abundance of water currently on our planet.
“Water is so vital to our survival, but strangely enough, we don’t know the first thing about it—literally the first,” wrote Brian Greene in a “Smithsonian Magazine” article. “Where does water, a giver and taker of life on planet Earth, come from?”
Some scientists have postulated that Earth’s water must have come from external sources, like asteroids. Perhaps they collided with Earth billions of years ago and thereby brought liquid water to the planet.
The Bible tells a different story. According to Genesis, God initially created Earth as a water-covered sphere (1:1-2), then separated the waters from the waters to create the sky or atmosphere (1:7). Later, during the Great Flood, the Bible describes “the fountains of the great deep” breaking open and inundating the globe with water (7:11).
New scientific findings seem to support the Bible’s account. A report published recently in the journal “Nature” proposes that water actually originated deep inside of the Earth. The report is based on research conducted by an international team of a dozen scientists.
“The ultimate origin of water in the Earth’s hydrosphere is in the deep Earth—the mantle,” the scientists wrote in their report.
The scientists say a layer of the Earth’s mantle about 250 to 410 miles below the surface “could be a major repository for water” and “have a key role in terrestrial magmatism and plate tectonics.”
The researchers based their findings on diamonds discovered in Brazil that originated deep inside the mantle of the Earth. They found a water-rich mineral—ringwoodite—inside the diamonds, leading them to believe that copious amounts of water may exist deep below Earth’s surface.
“The presence of hydrous ringwoodite in a diamond from transition-zone depths supports the view that high fluid activity, notably that of water, has a key role in the genesis of ultradeep diamonds,” the scientists explained in their nine-page report.
Graham Pearson, a Canadian geochemist who led the diamond study, said their findings suggest underground water is abundant.
“It’s actually the confirmation that there is a very, very large amount of water that’s trapped in a really distinct layer in the deep Earth,” he said, according to “Live Science.” “It translates into a very, very large mass of water, approaching the sort of mass of water that’s present in all the world’s ocean.”
Scientists stress that these findings are not conclusive and the subject remains controversial. However, the new evidence of plentiful underground water appear to confirm the Bible’s records that “the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God” (2 Peter 3:5).