Earth water came from space

The Herschel Observatory discovered in an interesting area close to a star; a finding that may help explain the origin of water on Earth...

by Alessandro Greco

The origin of the planet's water has been the subject of long debate among scientists. Currently, it is believed that it came to Earth via impacts with comets and asteroids during the formation of the Solar System.

An article published on Thursday (20th) in the journal Science found that there is plenty of water spread outside the solar system, confirming the hypothesis that it "landed" on earth thanks to these celestial bodies. "Our results show that there are substantial reservoirs of water frozen in systems that form planets, and consequently had the same kind of situation during the formation of the Solar System."

The finding supports the hypothesis that the Earth's oceans arrived by the impact of celestial bodies," said Michiel Hogerheijde of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, lead author of the study. He added: "It is likely that worlds covered by oceans exist throughout the universe."

With the data collected, the researchers were also able to estimate that the size of the reservoir of water is thousands of times greater than all the oceans on Earth.

Translated from the Portuguese verion by:

Lisa Karpova

Pravda.Ru