Over half of the water in our Solar System, found on Earth, and in various planets, their moons, comets and asteroids, existed from before our Sun was born 4.5 billion years ago, finds a new study published in the journal Science.
This has implications for the search for extraterrestrial life because ancient frozen water would have originated in inter stellar space and could have carried molecules of precursors to life. It would have seeded several cosmic bodies with these precursors.
“Our findings show that a significant fraction of our Solar System’s water, the most-fundamental ingredient to fostering life, is older than the Sun, which indicates that abundant, organic-rich interstellar ices should probably be found in all young planetary systems,” said Conel Alexander of the Carnegie Institute for Science who was part of the team.
The team led by L. Ilsedore Cleeves from the University of Michigan studied hydrogen and its heavier isotope deuterium. Isotopes are atoms of the same element that have the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons. The difference in masses between isotopes results in subtle differences in their behavior during chemical reactions. As a result, the ratio of hydrogen to deuterium in water molecules can tell scientists about the conditions under which the molecules formed.
