What we know is crucial to life, but scientists are still unsure how it originated from Earth. One theory is that by colliding with our planet in its early history, asteroid expression is essential for the formation of hydrogen hydrogen that is essential for water molecules. However, new research shows that the Earth already has enough hydrogen, thanks a lot.
British researchers have discovered a meteorite called Enstatite cartilage in previously unknown amounts of hydrogen. I know what you are thinking: What is the relationship between hydrogen on meteorites and the origin of water on Earth? The composition of the Enstatite hose meteorite is similar to that of the Earth 4.55 billion years ago. Therefore, if the meteorites had their own source of hydrogen, it is also likely that early Earth would have produced water without the help of foreign messengers.
“A fundamental problem for planetary scientists is that the Earth looks like it is today. Now, we think the materials that build our planet — the materials we can study with these rare meteorites is richer than we thought before,” James Bryson of the Department of Earth Sciences at Oxford University said in the university's statement. “This discovery supports the idea that water on Earth is a natural process, not the fluorine that bombs our Earth after it forms our planet.”
Bryson, co-author of a study published earlier this month in Icarus, whose colleagues investigated an enstatite soft meteorite from Alaska called Lar 12252.
The scientists behind the new study speculate that LAR 12252 may hold a large amount of “natural” hydrogen with sulfur. As a result, they used a strong X-ray beam to search meteorites for sulfur compounds. When studying the substance, called the matrix, surrounding one of the cartilages (a tiny spherical component), the team hit the jackpot: hydrogen sulfide. They found that the entire matrix had a large number of compounds, five times the total hydrogen, which was found in the amorphous portion of the cartilage of the meteorite, which had traces of hydrogen detected in previous studies.
It is worth noting that part of the meteorite obviously experienced land pollution, such as rust, with almost no hydrogen. This means that hydrogen sulfide in the matrix is ​​likely to be inherent. According to the researchers, since the meteorite has a composition similar to Earth 4.55 billion years ago, this suggests that by the time the Earth is hit by an asteroid, it would have had enough of its own hydrogen to eventually produce the amount of water that the Earth hosts today.
“We were very excited when the analysis told us that the samples contained hydrogen sulfide,” said Tom Barrett, a scientist in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford. “Because the possibility of this hydrogen sulfide originating from land pollution is very low, this study provides vital evidence to support the theory that the water on Earth is local, which is a natural result of what our planet is made of.”
Water is essential to all known organisms. Thus, by providing new insights into how the Earth obtains water, the study also sheds light on the lasting mysteries of the origin of life on our planet.
