Guardian.UK: Rosetta discovers water on comet 67p like nothing on Earth.
“Measurements from Rosetta’s Rosina instrument found that water on comet 67P /Churyumov-Gerasimenko contains about three times more deuterium – a heavy form of hydrogen – than water on Earth.” ... assuming all comets are the same.
Comments:
Thanks for the clarification. It sounded a bit ‘fluffy’, this article.
Posted by Garret P Vreeland on 12/12/14 at 08:14 PM
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The article I read delved into the science a bit. We do know the water composition of other comets. We also have theories about where comets originated, based on their orbits. Comets in different types of orbits tend to have different types of water.
What makes the rosetta discovery significant is that all of the other comets in similar orbits to 67p have water composition similar to earth. Scientists expected 67p to have this same type of water, but 67p is very different.
Comets in other orbits do in fact have very different water composition than earth. The article is a little confusing on what exactly is novel about the result.
Of course, this doesn’t rule out the theory that earth’s water came from a comet, but it weakens it.