One small step for a guy in a Hawaiian shirt…
There’s water on comets. But not water water. A different kind of water, unlike that on earth. So where did Earth’s water come from? The Huffington Post and others want to know:
Where did the Earth get its water? For years some scientists have argued that it was brought here by water-bearing comets that smashed into our planet during its infancy. But new data from the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission suggest that that theory is all wet.
The data show that the chemical signature of water found on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko differs significantly from that of the water found on Earth. (Comet 67P’s water contains about three times more of the heavy hydrogen isotope deuterium than does terrestrial water.) And that has Dr. Kathrin Altwegg, the principal investigator for the Rosetta instrument that collected the data, arguing that it’s unlikely that comets brought water our way.
So what – or who – brought good old H20 to earth?
Instead of comets, Altwegg said in a written statement, it could have been asteroids. She said that while asteroids today contain limited amounts of water, that probably wasn’t the case billions of years ago, according to The Guardian.
Next question: who put the water in the asteroids? Or is it comets and asteroids all the way down?
Meanwhile back on the idiot front:
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