The researchers relied on analyzing the chemical composition of “iron meteorites”, which represent rich stores of information about the first period of the history of the solar system.
Iron meteorites are rich stores of information
Courtesy of D. Grewal Enlarge image What is the source of ground water? Where did he come from? How was he raised? These questions have long been controversial among scientists trying to understand the ancient environments in which planetesimals formed.
The most accepted theory among scientists is that water reached Earth from the outer reaches of the solar system with comets, after their construction was completed several billion years ago.
But a research team led by the University of Arizona opposed this theory, according to study Recently published by the journal Nature Astronomy.
He says Damanveer Grewal“Current theories hold that the building blocks of planets arose from dry materials, and water was delivered to them during the final stages of planet formation, but our study shows that water was present from the beginning in The building blocks of planets.
The origin of the Earth
4.56 billion years ago, our Sun was a young star, and our current solar system was just a disk of rocky dust and gas. Over tens of millions of years, small pebbles of dust gathered together, like a snowball rolling larger and larger, to form “mini-asteroids” about a kilometer in size. They are the basic building blocks of Earth and other inner planets.
These planetesimals were the basic building blocks that came together in a subsequent epoch, from which the Earth and other inner planets were formed. Scientists can now observe these protoplanets; The iron meteorites that fell to Earth represent the remains of the cores of the first planetesimals that formed in the solar system.
Damanvir Grewal is an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at the University of Arizona
D. Grewal
Enlarge image
Grewal said in statements to Nature Middle East: By analyzing the chemical composition of these meteorites, we knew that they contained water in that first period of the formation of our planet.
Grewal adds: We examined the proportions of iron, copper, and nickel in those meteorites, which helped us determine the amount of “oxidized iron,” and given that iron can only be oxidized in the presence of water, this proved the presence of water indirectly in the first building blocks. For planet Earth.
The first molecules of life
Observations of water at this very early period in Earth’s history indicate the possibility of organic compounds containing elements such as carbon and nitrogen, which are essential for the origin of life.
Comments Paul Asimo Iron meteorites have been somewhat neglected by the planetary formation community, but they represent rich stores of information about the early period of History of the solar system.
He adds: The difference between what we measured in meteorites in the inner solar system and what we expected means the presence of oxygen activity about 10 thousand times higher.
Grewal says: This opens the door towards building a different vision of the distant history of planet Earth. If water was present in the first building blocks of our planet, it is likely that other important elements such as carbon and nitrogen would also be present, and the components of life may have been present in the seeds of rocky planets since the beginning.
