It may sound like something out of science fiction, but it’s stunningly true: the water on Earth is older than the Sun. While our Sun formed roughly 4.6 billion years ago, much of the water that now fills Earth’s oceans, clouds, and even your cells contains atoms that were born more than 13.8 billion years ago, shortly after the Big Bang. In every glass of water you drink, you're sipping the ancient chemistry of the cosmos.

Here’s how it works: water is made of hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen atoms in H₂O were forged moments after the Big Bang, among the very first elements to exist in the universe. Oxygen, on the other hand, came later cooked in the fiery hearts of massive stars and scattered into space when those stars exploded as supernovae. These elements bonded in interstellar space, clinging to dust grains and icy particles long before our Sun ignited.

When our solar system formed, Earth accreted from the leftover gas, rock, and ice within a spinning protoplanetary disk. Some of the planet’s early water likely came from ancient interstellar ice, preserved in comets, asteroids, and meteorites that bombarded young Earth during its violent formation. These water-rich bodies delivered not just liquid, but a molecular connection to the early universe materials that predate our star, our planet, and possibly even life itself.

So while the Sun may be older than Earth, the hydrogen in Earth’s water predates both, offering a direct link to the universe’s infancy. Every time we drink, we’re touching something truly timeless.

Credit: Scientific insights based on studies from NASA’s Astrobiology Institute, European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory, and peer-reviewed research published in Science and Nature Astronomy (2020–2025).