The origin of water on Earth is one of the mysteries that still baffles scientists until now, and it has been recognized before that ground water was the origin of icy comets or meteorites that contain water silicas that come outside of the "ice line", which is the distance from the star that can ice After that it condenses because of the low temperatures.
But more recent studies have made observations opposed to this theory, yet they have failed to provide reasonable proposals or alternatives to the groundwater source.
In the new study published in Scientific Reports and addressed by a report on the Eurek Alert on July 17, scientists concluded that interstellar organic matter can produce an abundant supply of water by heating, indicating that Organic matter can be a source of ground water.
The water inside the ice line
Although large quantities of organic matter were found in interstellar dust, which was called the Precometary organic matter, there were no empirical investigations into the possible potential source of water.
"Until now, organic matter has been given much less attention compared to ice and silicates, despite its availability within the ice line," says planetary scientist Akira Kochi at Hokkaido University in Japan.
In the current study, the group of scientists led by Akira Kochi showed that heating interstellar organic matter at elevated temperatures can produce an abundance of water and oil, and this indicates that water can be produced inside the ice line, without any contribution from comets or meteorites that are received from outside Ice line.
Watch ... a video showing how round water droplets form significantly at around 350 ° C
Details of the experiment
As a first step, the researchers made an isotope of organic matter in interstellar molecular clouds using chemical reagents, and then gradually heated the corresponding organic material from 24 to 400 ° C under pressure conditions in the diamond cell and the sample remained uniform up to 100 ° C, but was separated into two phases At 200 ° C.
At about 350 ° C the composition of the water droplets became clear and the sizes of the droplets increased with increasing temperature, and at 400 ° C, in addition to the water droplets, black oil was produced.
The group conducted similar experiments on larger quantities of organic matter, which also produced water and oil. The analysis revealed that the main component of the water product was pure water, and the chemical analysis of the produced oil also showed similar properties to the typical underground crude oil.
"Our results show that interstellar organic matter inside the ice line is a potential source of water on Earth," Akira Kochi says. "Moreover, the formation of the non-essential oil that we observed indicates that the ancient Earth's oil sources are denser than previously thought."
She emphasized that "future analyzes of organic matter in samples from the asteroid" Ryugu ", which will be returned by the Japanese asteroid explorer" Hayabusa 2 ab (Hayabusa2) later this year, should enhance our understanding of the origin of the Earth's water. "
Scientists believe Ryugu can contain organic materials that may have contributed to the emergence of life on Earth, and if the Japanese explorer's journey is successfully completed and scheduled for the end of 2020, it will be the first time that samples from below the surface of an asteroid have been brought to Earth.