Rosetta Shows Earth’s Water Did Not Come From Comets: Study
I don’t know if we can yet be as conclusive about this as the click bait headline declares, but this is an interesting discovery.
Early results from Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft challenge a long-held theory that comets delivered water to early Earth, a study released on Wednesday shows.
Chemical analysis of water coming from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which Rosetta has been orbiting since August, shows it has three times more deuterium - an atomic variation of regular hydrogen - as hydrogen in water molecules on Earth, said Rosetta scientist Kathrin Altwegg, with the University of Bern.
Water is comprised of two hydrogen atoms bonded with one oxygen atom. On Earth, three in 10,000 water molecules have the heavy hydrogen isotope deuterium.
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