Posts

Water, Water, Every Where — And Now Scientists Know Where it Came From

Water on Earth is omnipresent and essential for life as we know it, and yet scientists remain a bit baffled about where all of this water came from: Was it present when the planet formed, or did the planet form dry and only later get its water from impacts with water-rich objects such as comets?

A new study in the journal Science suggests that the Earth likely got a lot of its precious water from the original materials that built the planet, instead of having water arrive later from afar.

From Snow Pack to Faucet: Tracing the Source of Our Water

Los Angeles’s water sources run as far as hundreds of miles away. In some cases, water drips from the snowmelt of the Sierra Mountains, trickles down to the Owens Valley, and is collected in a system of canals and aqueducts that pump water away from its natural avenues to deliver them to faucets throughout the greater Los Angeles region.