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Experts Research the Origin of Water on Earth in Relation to the Sun’s Wind

Jakarta, CNN Indonesia

Where does the ocean come from Earth? Where does the Earth get its water supply from? The basic questions of mankind are now beginning to be answered through research results.

For the past few years astronomers have theorized that asteroids and comets deposited water on Earth’s surface during the planet’s early days.

Now, a study in Nature Astronomy have shown that the Sun itself could be an additional source, the solar wind on reacting with minerals in space dust to produce water molecules.

Reported from Cosmos Magazine, an international research team is examining samples from the Japan Hayabusa spacecraft mission, which brought part of the asteroid to Earth in 2010.

“We started wanting to measure the effects of space weathering on particles brought back from this asteroid,” said Associate Professor Nick Timms of Curtin University.

But the researchers found that near the surface, the ‘isotope composition’ of hydrogen (the ratio of heavier to lighter hydrogen atoms) in the sample was not what they expected.

They determined that the ratio had been removed by the solar wind distributing protons, which are the same thing as hydrogen ions (H+).

“Only the surface of the particles on this asteroid that have been exposed to the Sun has this layer of hydrogen implanted,” Timms said.

Researchers believe this additional source of hydrogen could help understand the isotopic composition of Earth’s oceans. Hydrogen ions (H+) from the solar wind react with oxygen atoms (O) in silicates in rocks to produce water (H2O).

“The theory is that water was brought to Earth in the late stages of its formation in type C asteroids. However previous testing of these asteroid isotope ‘fingerprints’ found that they did not match on average the water found on Earth which meant there was at least one source. others that haven’t been discovered yet,” said Professor Phil Bland, also of Curtin.

“Our research shows that the solar wind creates water on the surface of these tiny dust grains and this lighter isotope water likely provides the rest of Earth’s water.”

Timms said the discovery also brings exciting results for space exploration.

“Another implication is that if the surface of another asteroid or other airless object has water that is similarly implanted on the surface particles, that’s a pretty neat reservoir to think about trying to release that water as a resource for fuel, life or whatever. want for interplanetary exploration missions,” said Bland.

Meanwhile, New Scientist revealing studies of meteorites have found that they are surprisingly rich in water. That suggests early in our planet’s history about 4.6 billion years ago, an incoming asteroid sent water and allowed Earth to become the habitable world we see today.

Although the composition of water in meteorites is not exactly the same as that on Earth.

Luke Daly at the University of Glasgow, UK, and his colleagues think they have solved this problem by studying a single grain of material returned from the asteroid Itokawa by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa in 2010.

They found evidence that the asteroid had been irradiated by particles of the solar wind that turned a small amount of dust into water.

“For every cubic meter [bahan asteroid], you will get 20 liters of water,” said Daly.

The solar wind is made up mostly of hydrogen ions emitted by the sun, which combine with oxygen atoms in the asteroid rock to produce water.

Previous research has shown that asteroids like Itokawa can contain a lot of water, but where that water comes from is unclear.

Our solar system is thought to have been abundant in dust in its early stages, so that some of it could have been turned into water by the solar wind, before flowing to the earth’s surface after its formation. Most importantly, this water contains less deuterium than the asteroid does.

“You can produce oceans on Earth by mixing the two reservoirs together,” he said.

The method used to make the discovery involves studying the individual atoms of the asteroid using a technique known as atomic probe tomography, which could be useful in future studies.

Daly hopes to use the same method to study grains from the asteroid Ryugu returned by the Hayabusa 2 mission in 2020 to look for a similar effect. The findings are also said to have implications for future space exploration.

“It will be very interesting to see if we see the same thing. Any rocky surface will have tiny grains that have been exposed to the solar wind,” Daly said.

“If we wanted to install permanent human habitation facilities in another world, you could see [debu] as a way of producing water,” he concluded.

(TTF/FA)

[Gambas:Video CNN]


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