How Oceans Formed

Formation of Hydrogen and Oxygen

When we look at our planet from space, we see that seventy percent (70%) of the Earth's surface is covered by oceans. Their average depth is said to be around 3700 meters. Do you ever wonder how these waters, which have shaped the continents since the beginning, formed the atmosphere and provided the source of life? It is known that countless species, from bacteria to whales, live in the oceans even today. Oceans are actually at the center of our planet's ecology, climate, and weather conditions. Oceans are what create wind, turn into clouds, and connect the polar regions with underwater currents. However, oceans have not always been here since the Earth took shape. At that time, there were no oceans. The waters that host countless living beings, the source of all life, fell to Earth from space as frozen pieces, an alien substance, hundreds of millions of years after the Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago. At that time, our planet, Earth, was just a dry landmass with volcanoes that were constantly erupting.

As fusions went through various stages, the first stars created many heavy elements from helium to iron.

Actually, the water molecule, composed of these two atoms (hydrogen and oxygen), is the second most common substance in the world and the universe. Hydrogen emerged immediately after the Big Bang. As the universe took shape with this great explosion 13.8 billion years ago, some of the energy released began to rapidly condense into radiation and particles. Within the first three (3) minutes after the explosion, newly formed electrons and protons slowed down, attracted each other, and all the hydrogen in the universe was formed during this time. The oxygen atom emerged millions of years later. As the universe evolved, hydrogen clouds gathered, condensed, and it is said they turned into helium after merging. The first stars in the universe, as they formed and took shape, burned for millions of years, emitting light until their hydrogen was depleted. Here, the stars collapsed, and their heliums merged. Finally, because their gravitational pull was not strong enough to hold the resulting heavy atoms, the stars suddenly exploded and extinguished, and from the clouds that emerged after this explosion; carbon, neon, sulfur, sodium, argon, chlorine, and most importantly, oxygen atoms were created. Approximately 5 billion years ago, hydrogen and oxygen atoms were flying in clouds (nebulae) as large as planets in these stellar remnants. The Sun was formed when a cloud of hydrogen gas, collapsing within these giant clouds, ignited.