Did the chemical components necessary to create water on Earth come from space or already exist here? One prevailing notion holds that asteroids containing either water of its building blocks bombarded the planet. But now, a team of researchers have produced evidence that those building blocks were here since early in the planet’s history, according to a study published in the journal Icarus.
Pinpointing when and where Earth’s hydrogen is an essential key to understanding how life arose on the planet. Without hydrogen, there’s no water, and without water, life can’t exist here.
Ironically, researchers turned to a meteorite containing hydrogen to prove that such former bodies did not provide the H2 ingredient of water’s H2O recipe. They examined a rare type of meteorite — known as an enstatite chondrite — that was built similarly to early Earth 4.5 billion years ago and the team discovered hydrogen present in the ...
