The origin of terrestrial water is much older than the Sun, the planets and any celestial body in the Solar System. This is what we know.
Not even the main star of the Solar System It is as old as terrestrial water, according to observations from the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter Array) radio observatory, in the Atacama Desert, north of Chile. According to the researchers, it seems that the water that exists on our planet originated in interstellar space.
NASA defines this region as “the place where the constant flow of solar material and its magnetic field they stop affecting what surrounds them«, as published in Space Place, your platform for childhoods. That is, the water that today exists on the earth’s surface formed well beyond the influence of our Sun. That’s how they found out.
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In a galaxy far, far away
Incredible as it may seem, ALMA astronomers found the origin of terrestrial water far away from here. Specifically, in the solar forming cloud that is in V883 Orionis, a star in its early stages of life that is located in the constellation Orion. This place is 1,300 light years from Earth and, even so, it might be the ‘missing link’ that explains how did we become the blue planet.
This young star is surrounded by a ring of gas and cosmic dustsay the researchers. Just as in the Oort Cloud, the shell that envelops our Solar System, these elements eventually become en asteroids, comets, planets and even stars. In this space, they managed to trace water in a gaseous state:
Only in this way, explains John J. Tobin, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomical Observatory (United States) and lead author of the study, was it possible to “trace the origins of the water in our solar system until before the formation of the Sun.
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According to the study, recently published in Naturethe composition of the gaseous water found in V883 Orionis closely resembles that which has been identified in the comets of our own Solar System. This confirms, according to the ALMA researchers, that terrestrial water originated billions of years ago, long before the birth of the Sun.
Not only that: it seems that interstellar space was the one who, billions of years ago, allowed us to have the vital resource of our planet. maybe it’s the most important inheritance we have received from the Universe.
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