Earth water does not come from comets

Data from the Rosetta spacecraft and the Philae robot show that comets do not bring water to the earth in the past as the scientific community previously determined.

According to Science magazine, experts from the European Space Agency (ESA) studied the data collected by the Rosetta and the Philae robots from comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko and evaluated the water in another comet with the water. Earth.

Philae robot on comet surface 67P - (Photo: Reuters)

Water on earth has its own characteristics. Earth's water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, but sometimes a hydrogen atom is replaced by a deuterium atom. On average, every 10,000 molecules of water have three deuterium atoms.

The ESA team said that water on comets is more than three times heavier than water on Earth. Therefore it is unlikely that comets have brought water to earth to form life on the green planet billions of years ago.

Professor Kathrin Altwegg of the Rosetta team said comets 67P came from the Kuiper belt in the solar system. The newly published results show that water on earth cannot come from the Kuiper belt 'storage tank' .

Experts believe that many of the meteorites are the means to bring water to the earth. Meteors in the solar system are formed closer to the earth than comets, thus being able to crash into the earth higher and bring water to the ground.

Since last August, Rosetta has approached comet 67P. Currently, Philae has run out of batteries and is "hibernating" , but can still gather a large amount of data.

Rosetta is still observing comet 67P to collect data.