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FluffyGarbage23 t1_j20hewe wrote

Reply to comment by SparseGhostC2C in Earth was brought to life by ancient water-rich asteroids from the outer Solar System by marketrent

Im curious as well. It wouldve been millions, or billions, or trillions of asteroids large enough to not break up, but large enough to "survive" an impact with Earth for long enough to not get instantly evaporated by proto-Earth lavas and what not.

Its not exactly like theyre balloons filled up with water being thrown at Earth, theyre mostly just rock, minerals and metals.

Unless we got lucky and got a bunch of massive ice-asteroids.

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SparseGhostC2C t1_j20i498 wrote

Another reply to me had suggested much of it may have come along during the Theia impact which lead to the creation of the moon, since the object that would have collided with earth would've been much larger than your average asteroid or meteor. It sounds totally plausible but I'm still very curious to find more info.

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citro-naut t1_j227b6e wrote

Keep in mind that once earth became sufficiently large, even volatiles that were vaporized would still be retained. Just think about how we can boil water today and it’s not like the water vapor disappears to space.

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