The solution to how life was sparked on Earth?

Scientists find SECOND asteroid with water on it

Scientists have found water ice on an asteroid for the second time in just six months.

The discovery suggests that such ice is more common on asteroids in our section of the solar system than previously thought - and that such asteroids may have delivered much of the essentials for early life to Earth.

Two research teams found evidence of water and organic molecules on asteroid 65 Cybele.

Six months ago the teams made a similar discovery on a different rock - asteroid 24 Themis - for the first time. 

The reason for life on Earth? A computer generated image shows an asteroid striking our planet (file photo)

'This discovery suggests that this region of our solar system contains more water ice than anticipated,'Humberto Campins, of the University of Central Florida, told reporters at the 42nd American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences annual meeting in Pasadena, California on Friday.

'And it supports the theory that asteroids may have hit Earth and brought our planet its water and the building blocks for life to form and evolve here.'

He told the meeting that the teams had used two different Nasa instruments to analsye sunlight bouncing off 65 Cybele. 

Using powerful Nasa telescopes, they found what they believe is a layer of ice less than one micron thick, Campins said.

The scientists still are not sure where the ice came from, he said. But it could be primordial - that is, leftover from the beginning of the solar system's formation.

When the teams found ice on the first asteroid, 24 Themis, in April this year it change the way many think about the space rocks.

Both asteroids - found in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars - had always been considered too close to the sun to have water. Any water they may have carried at the beginning of the solar system's formation should have long evaporated by now, scientists argued.

But the fact that water appears to still exist on the space rocks, 4.6billion years later, suggests that it may have been asteroids that delivered the water that filled Earth's oceans.

The research has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

 

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