Earth’s Water Story Gets A Plot Twist From Space Rock Search

We at Universe Today have snow on our minds these days with all this Polar Vortex talk. From out the window, the snowflakes all look the same, but peer at flakes under a microscope and you can see all these different designs pop up. Turns out that our asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is also much more diverse than previously believed, all because astronomers took the time to do a detailed survey.

Here’s the interesting thing: the diversity, the team says, implies that Earth-like planets would be hard to find, which could be a blow for astronomers seeking an Earth 2.0 somewhere out in the universe if other research agrees.

To jump back a couple of steps, there’s a debate about how water arose on Earth. One theory is that back billions of years ago when the solar system was settling into its current state — a time when planetesimals were crashing into each other constantly and the larger planets possibly migrated between different orbits — comets and asteroids bearing water crashed into a proto-Earth.

Artist’s conception of asteroids or comets bearing water to a proto-Earth. Credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

“If true, the stirring provided by migrating planets may have been essential to bringing those asteroids,” the astronomers stated in a press release. “This raises the question of whether an Earth-like exoplanet would also require a rain of asteroids to bring water and make it habitable. If so, then Earth-like worlds might be rarer than we thought.”

To take this example further, the researchers found that the asteroid belt comes from a mix of locations around the solar system. Well, a model the astronomers cite shows that Jupiter once migrated much closer to the sun, basically at the same distance as where Mars is now.

When Jupiter migrated, it disturbed everything in its wake and possibly removed as much as 99.9 per cent of the original asteroid population. And other planet migrations in general threw in rocks from everywhere into the asteroid belt. This means the origin of water in the belt could be more complicated than previously believed.

You can read more details of the survey in the journal Nature. Data was gathered from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the research was led by Francesca DeMeo, a Hubble postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Source: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Elizabeth Howell

Elizabeth Howell is the senior writer at Universe Today. She also works for Space.com, Space Exploration Network, the NASA Lunar Science Institute, NASA Astrobiology Magazine and LiveScience, among others. Career highlights include watching three shuttle launches, and going on a two-week simulated Mars expedition in rural Utah. You can follow her on Twitter @howellspace or contact her at her website.

Recent Posts

Here’s What We Know About Earth’s Temporary Mini-Moon

For a little over a month now, the Earth has been joined by a new…

16 minutes ago

New Study Suggests Black Holes Get their “Hair” from their Mothers

Despite decades of study, black holes are still one of the most puzzling objects in…

1 hour ago

Gaze at New Pictures of the Sun from Solar Orbiter

74 million kilometres is a huge distance from which to observe something. But 74 million…

1 hour ago

Are Fast Radio Bursts Caused by Interstellar Objects Crashing Into Neutron Stars?

Astronomers have only been aware of fast radio bursts for about two decades. These are…

6 hours ago

Here’s How to Weigh Gigantic Filaments of Dark Matter

How do you weigh one of the largest objects in the entire universe? Very carefully,…

8 hours ago

How Could Astronauts Call for Help from the Moon?

Exploring the Moon poses significant risks, with its extreme environment and hazardous terrain presenting numerous…

21 hours ago