Water on Earth may be older than the Sun itself: Study
Clouds above Atlantic ocean
Sun has formed planets in the solar system. Every ounce of material on Earth, including ourselves, are formed from the material that was once spinning aimlessly around it when the Sun was forming.
Given all this, it's natural for us to consider the Sun to be the starting point of everything as far as we are concerned. It is therefore intriguing to consider opinion of some scientists that some of the water on Earth may be older than the Sun.
The research team is from European South Observatory (ESO). The team made use of Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile to observe a planet forming disc around the star named V883 Orionis.
A star begins to form when large amount of dust and gas suddenly begins to collapse and forms a protostar. As the star formation progresses, the material around the protostar begins to revolve around it and over the course of millions of years, may form planets, asteroids and even comets which become part of the star system.
There are large amount of water molecules in this material in the planet-forming disc around the star.
The research team measured the chemical signature of the water content in this disc. This chemical signature gives us the idea where and when the water was formed.
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For example, a chemical signature of the water found in a comet is similar to that on Earth, it may be said that comets could have delivered water to our planet.
“V883 Orionis is the missing link in this case. The composition of the water in the disc is very similar to that of comets in our own Solar System. This is confirmation of the idea that the water in planetary systems formed billions of years ago, before the Sun, in interstellar space, and has been inherited by both comets and Earth, relatively unchanged,” said John J. Tobin, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, USA and lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.
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