Earth’s water explained by gas giant gluttony (New Theory)

The author of this theory says “Jupiter and Saturn’s growth naturally pollutes the inner Solar System with water-rich planetesimals. In my mind the mechanism is very clear”. The theory does seem to bear a resemblance to this summary from the Hans Rickman Uppsala Astronomical Observatory.
Water on Earth, Mars and everywhere within the inner Solar System can be traced back to the rapid waist-expanding growth of Jupiter and Saturn, which knocked inwards a local population of icy planetesimals, as Sci-News reports.
This is according to a new model, which could also explain the current makeup of our modern asteroid belt.
Whilst Earth is often described as the blue marble, with over 70% of its surface covered in oceans, seas, rivers and lakes, water actually makes up less than 0.1% of our planet by mass.

The majority of H2O in the inner Solar System actually can be found in the asteroid belt — particularly within the outer belt’s carbonaceous asteroids. Meteorites from these so-called C-type asteroids have contained up to 10% water by mass.
However, for scientists, a bigger surprise is the fact that water exists at all this far inside the orbit of Jupiter, where temperatures should have restricted planetary bodies to grow out of little more than rock and iron.
Debates over the origin of this inner solar system water go back decades, focusing initially on icy comets.
However, at the dawn of the 21st century that preference has to be rethought after comparisons of a particular chemical fingerprint of water, known as its D-H ratio, between samples from Earth and those collected from asteroids, comets and free solar system gas showed it was the C-type asteroid water that matched most closely with Earth’s.
“It suggested that C-type asteroids and whatever delivered Earth’s water came from the same population,” says astronomer and solar system modeler Sean Raymond at the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux in Bordeaux, France.
“They are brothers and sisters from the same parent population.”
Now all that was lacking was an origin of these celestial siblings and an explanation of why they packed up and left their colder outer solar system home.

 Illustration showing all of Earth’s water, liquid freshwater, and freshwater in lakes and rivers. Image credit: Howard Perlman, USGS / Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution / Adam Nieman


SOURCE: http://www.sci-news.com/space/earths-water-gas-giant-gluttony-05054.html