Textbooks describe the water cycle: the Sun heats the surfaces of rivers and oceans, tiny water particles rise into the atmosphere, condense into clouds, and fall back to Earth as rain. Rainwater flows into rivers, then into seas, and eventually returns to the air to fall again as rain, snow, or dew.
However, despite this cycle, the total amount of water on Earth is decreasing.
There isn’t a single patch of land on our planet that hasn’t once been the bottom of the sea. The emergence of continents and many islands is the result of not only geological processes but also the reduction of water on Earth.
So where does the water go?
Soviet scientists helped answer it.
It turns out our daytime star, the Sun, is stealing water from Earth.
Powerful streams of solar radiation bombard the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere, breaking apart air molecules. The hydrogen released — the lightest of Earth’s gases — then escapes into space.
Scientists estimate that since Earth cooled and oceans and lakes formed, the Sun has removed a layer of water roughly 6 meters thick.
All that water, broken down into hydrogen and oxygen atoms, has escaped Earth and dispersed into space.
