Water is created during planet formation (IMAGE)
Caption
New research uses laboratory experiments to demonstrate that water is naturally created during the planet formation process. By squeezing and heating planetary analog materials between the tips of two diamonds, scientists from Carnegie, IPGP, and UCLA demonstrated that interactions between a young planet's atmosphere and its primitive magma ocean generates water and dissolves hydrogen into the magma melt. This work has major implications for our understanding of planetary habitability and the search for exoplanets that could host life.
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Image courtesy of Navid Marvi/Carnegie Science.
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