What is the origin of the Earth's oceans?
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It now appears that the waters making up the present oceans (and the gases that make up the present atmosphere) were not of cosmic origin, i.e., were not present in the primordial atmosphere. Instead, they were derived from the interior of the earth sometime in the first one or two billion years after the earth's formation. It is now also generally accepted that a new ocean crust has been forming more or less continuously for at least the past 200 million years through a process of volcanic activity along the midocean ridge system (see seafloor spreading ), which consists of a series of underwater mountains. On the basis of present knowledge it seems highly probable that all ocean waters and atmospheric gases were gradually released by the separation of these volatile components from the silicate rocks of the crust and upper mantle through volcanic activity. (Molten lava is known to contain appreciable amounts of water and other volatiles that are released upon solidification.) With the passage of time, water released by volcanic activity gradually filled oceanic depressions.
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