 Before plate tectonics the ideas about the origin of the oceans and atmospheres were What looks like now to be pretty rudimentary, but in fact they were pretty profound There were observations being made by various observers Particularly volcanoes that what comes out of volcanoes is debris lava flows Ash which is fragmented rock thrown up into the atmosphere, but also gases and since that the There are a lot of volcanoes around on the surface of the earth People started thinking well these gases. Where do they go to where do they come from they could pretty quickly tell that where they were going to was Into the atmosphere that's already there and to some extent the nature of the gases was such that you could say perhaps these gases like water Are the original source of all the water on the surface of the earth that if you allow these volcanoes to work for some period of time You accumulate all those gases particularly water Where the right distance from the Sun that the water would condense and form a liquid and the carbon dioxide which they can measure in these gases They say well to some extent that just dissolves in the oceans So it's almost like a perfect condenser and it was all based on observation and I think they were pretty good observations So this was a great idea and I think many people accepted that they thought yep This is going to be where we can account for the origin of the our atmosphere And the oceans that are also being formed at the same time