(ËvÉr bÉl) adj. 1. of or consisting of words: verbal ability. 2. spoken rather than written; oral: verbal communication. 3. concerned with words only, rather than with the ideas, facts, or realities expressed: a purely verbal distinction. 4. corresponding word for word; verbatim: a verbal translation.
Life is the process that resolves these disequilibria.. The water world theory suggests that the warm, alkaline hydrothermal vents maintained an unbalanced state with respect to the surrounding ancient, acidic ocean - one that could have created two chemical imbalances. The first was a proton gradient, where hydrogen ions were concentrated more on the outside of the vent's chimneys.
Via plate tectonics, that water has been supplying the oceans. They studied garnet, and found it could work with another mineral, called ringwoodite, to deliver water to the Earth's interior â water that would later come up as the mantle material circulated. Complicating the picture, neither of these hypotheses is mutually exclusive. Asteroids could deliver water while some could come from the Earth's interior. The question is how much each would deliver â and how to find that out. So this mystery will remain one, at least for a little while longer. Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience.