Water, that element so important for the achievement of life, may be more widespread in the universe than scientists thought. Now, a new study by the Carnegie Institute in Washington (USA) concludes that half of the water in our solar system was formed long before the appearance of the Sun. This means that there may be water everywhere and there may also be life.
Half of the water on Earth was formed in the cloud of dust and gas that created our solar system, probably from ice modeled in interstellar space. And if this is so, if water can form in abundance in such clouds, it can be found everywhere , as detailed in the study published in the journal Science .
“If the water in the early Solar System came primarily from ice in interstellar space, then it is likely that a similar ice cover – along with the prebiotic organic matter they contain – is abundant in most or all of the surrounding protoplanetary disks. of the formation of the stars “, affirms Conel Alexander, co-author of the study.
The researchers focused on the history of ice in the solar system, specifically hydrogen and its heavier deuterium. Thus, they created models that simulated a protoplanetary disk (the so-called solar nebula from which the planets arose) in which all the deuterium in the ice had been removed by the chemical process , so the system had to start over “from scratch. “in the production of ice with deuterium. They found that it was not capable, revealing that at least some of the water in our own Solar System therefore predates the Sun’s birth and originates from interstellar space .
