Genesis 1
According to chapter one of Genesis, there is an expanse that separates water from water as follows:
(
Bold emphasis ours)
6 God said, (
to the source),
"become" (hayah) an expanse in the midst of the water, that it may separate water from water." 7 And God made (asah - עָשָׂה) the expanse and it separated between the water that was below the expanse and the water that was above (al - עַל) the expanse, and it was so. 8 And God called the expanse Heaven, and it was evening, and it was morning, a second day.
(Translation - Rabbi A.J. Rosenberg)
Now when God made (asah - עָשָׂה), I.e. completed the expanse (Heaven), this was the first heaven. For example, according to chapter one of Genesis, the birds fly across the expanse (heaven) of Heavens as follows:
20 And God said, "Let the waters swarm a swarming of living creatures, and let fowl fly over the earth, across the expanse of the heavens."
(Translation - Rabbi A.J. Rosenberg)
Therefore verse twenty is the first heaven/sky (expanse) of heavens which the birds fly across, and verses 6-8 is the same expanse (heaven/sky) that separates the water below, I.e. the Earth's oceans, from the water above. But what are the waters above the expanse (heaven/sky)? Firstly the concept of heaven (sky) or heavens can be described as the space above the earth, although there are no real boundaries as to where heaven (sky) ends or space begins. Secondly, because there are no boundaries, the expanse can be described as the atmosphere that starts from the surface of the Earth and includes the following seven layers:
● Troposphere
○ This layer is on average it is 7.5 miles in height from the surface of the earth toward the sky
○ Nearly all the atmospheric water vapour (99%) is found in this layer and is where the majority of the weather takes place
● Stratosphere
○ This extends upwards from the tropopause to about 32 miles and holds 19 percent of the atmosphere's gases but very little water vapour
○ The ozone layer is found within the stratosphere. Ozone molecules in this layer absorb high-energy ultraviolet (UV) light from the Sun, converting the UV energy into heat
● Mesosphere
○ This layer extends upward to a height of about 53 miles above the earth
○ The gases in the mesosphere are thick enough to slow down meteors hurtling into the atmosphere, where they burn up, leaving fiery trails in the night sky
● Thermosphere
○ This layer extends from about 56 miles to between 311 to 621 miles above the earth's surface
○ The Temperatures in the upper thermosphere can range from about 500° C (932° F) to 2,000° C (3,632° F) or higher
● Ionosphere
○ This layer is located within the thermosphere and extends from about 56 to 190 miles above the earth's surface, and is made of electrically charged (ionized) gas particles
● Exosphere
○ This is the outermost layer of the atmosphere. It extends from about 375 miles to 6,200 miles above the surface of the earth
○ In this layer, atoms and molecules escape into space and satellites orbit the earth
From this, it is important to note that the seven layers of the atmosphere can be defined as an expanse, but are any of these layers separating the waters above, I.e. in the universe? Firstly verses 6-8 are still part of the early stages of God's creation. For example, concerning the water below the expanse, the following information can be considered:
A team of scientists at Arizona State University (ASU), led by Peter Buseck, has come up with a new proposal. The new peer-reviewed paper was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets on October 9, 2018.
The new research suggests that Earth’s water came from both rocky material, such as asteroids, and from the vast cloud of dust and gas remaining after the sun’s formation, called the solar nebula.
Earth’s ocean water is similar to that found in asteroids. That’s one reason scientists have long thought that most earthly water came from an asteroid bombardment in the days of the early solar system.
Also, Samples from asteroid Itokawa collected by a Japanese space probe suggest that Earth's water may have been created by the sun.
This water may have rained on the fledgling Earth in the form of dust grains produced by the interaction of the solar wind, the stream of charged particles emanating from the sun, with various bodies in the solar system, a new study suggests.
"The solar winds are streams of mostly hydrogen and helium ions which flow constantly from the sun out into space," Luke Daly, a planetary scientist at the University of Glasgow in the U.K., and a lead author of the new paper said in a statement. "When those hydrogen ions hit an airless surface like an asteroid or a spaceborne dust particle, they penetrate a few tens of nanometers [one inch has 24.5 million nanometers] below the surface, where they can affect the chemical composition of the rock."
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Earth's earliest water may have come from solar wind and space rocks)
And astronomers have discovered the largest and oldest mass of water ever detected in the universe — a gigantic, 12-billion-year-old cloud harbouring 140 trillion times more water than all of Earth's oceans combined.
The cloud of water vapour surrounds a supermassive black hole called a quasar located 12 billion light-years from Earth. The discovery shows that water has been prevalent in the universe for nearly its entire existence, researchers said.
"Because the light we are seeing left this quasar more than 12 billion years ago, we are seeing water that was present only some 1.6 billion years after the beginning of the universe," said study co-author Alberto Bolatto, of the University of Maryland, in a statement. "This discovery pushes the detection of water one billion years closer to the Big Bang than any previous find."
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Astronomers Find Largest, Oldest Mass of Water in Universe)
Therefore based on the above information shows that in the early formation of the Earth, the mesosphere, which is the layer where the gases are thick enough to slow down meteors and cause them to burn up, and possibly the other layers of the Earth's atmosphere could have contributed to the amount of water upon the Earth, which some scientists suggest was caused by asteroids and the cloud of dust and gas remaining after the sun’s formation.
Conclusion
The Bible shows that God called the first heaven/sky an expanse, which extends upwards from the surface of the Earth and includes all seven layers of the Earth's atmosphere, and that below the expanse is water, I.e. the Earth’s oceans, and above the expanse, which is the second heaven is also water that was abundant in the universe during early formation of the Earth.