Dust particles collected by a Japanese space probe from an asteroid about 300 million kilometers from Earth have revealed a surprising composition: a drop of water, scientists say school said on Friday. This discovery provides new support for the theory that life on Earth was seeded from space.
The discovery is part of the latest published study from the analysis of 5.4 grams of rock and dust collected by the Hayabusa-2 probe from the asteroid Ryugu.
“This drop of water has great significance,” Tohoku University’s chief scientist Tomoki Nakamura told reporters before the study was published in the journal Science on Friday.
“Many researchers believe that water was brought (from space) but we actually discovered water in Ryugu, a small planet nearby The earthfirst. “
F, and returned to Earth orbit two years ago to drop a sample capsule.
The precious cargo has yielded several insights, including organic material that suggests some of the building blocks of life on Earth, amino acids, may have formed in space.
Research published Friday says the team found a drop of liquid in the Ryugu sample “is carbonated water containing salts and organic matter,” Nakamura said.
That strengthens the hypothesis that asteroids like Ryugu, or its larger parent asteroid, may have “provided water, salt, and organic matter” during collisions with Earth, Nakamura said. .
“We have discovered evidence that this (process) may be directly related to, for example, the origin of the Earth’s oceans or organic matter.”
Nakamura’s team, which includes about 150 researchers – including 30 researchers from the US, UK, France, Italy and China – is one of the largest analyzing samples from Ryugu.
The sample was divided among different scientific groups to maximize the chances of new discoveries.
Kensei Kobayashi, an astronomer and professor emeritus at Yokohama National University who was not part of the research team, praised the discovery.
“The fact that water was detected in the sample itself is surprising,” he told AFP, given its fragility and the possibility of it being destroyed in space.
“It suggests that the asteroid contained water – in the form of a liquid rather than just ice – and that organic matter may have been produced in that water.”
