Origin & Evolution of Life

Our Ocean's Cosmic Origin

By Keith Cowing
Press Release
NASA
April 8, 2015
Filed under ,
Our Ocean's Cosmic Origin
Our Ocean's Cosmic Origin
NASA

A new study published in Science looks beyond the question of whether Earth’s oceans can be traced to comets or other objects from space, and instead asks the question: where did the water in comets come from?

The answer: some of it, maybe even a majority, is interstellar, and either survived the formation of our Sun and planetary disk or migrated here at a later time. The findings could have important implications in understanding how the Earth became habitable, and life’s potential in other planetary systems.

This research was supported by NASA Astrobiology, the National Science Foundation, the Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship, NASA Cosmochemistry and NASA.

The ancient heritage of water ice in the solar system, Science

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻