For the first time, have found convincing evidence for the presence of liquid water in a comet. The finding thus breaks the current paradigm that these heavenly bodies can never have enough internal heat to allow the existence of liquid water. Eve
Berger of the University of Arizona, Dante Lauretta of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Shanghai Jiaotong University, and colleagues at NASA and the Naval Research Laboratory made the discovery by analyzing dust grains brought to Earth from the comet Wild-2 as part of the Stardust mission.
Launched in 1999, the Stardust spacecraft collected in 2004 tiny particles shed from the comet's surface and brought to Earth in a capsule landed in Utah two years later.
In the samples, the research team has found minerals formed in the presence of liquid water. The verdict is therefore clear: At some point in their history, the comet had to hold pockets of liquid water.
A comets are often described as dirty snowballs, because they consist mostly of ice, sprinkled with rock debris and frozen gases.
Unlike asteroids, which are made of stone material for the most part, comets look a tail or wake, consisting of the jet of matter in the form of gas and tiny solid fragments, the current high-energy particles from the sun starts to their frozen bodies.
Minerals formed in the presence of water, made at a temperature of between 50 and 200 degrees Fahrenheit, much hotter than the below zero temperatures predicted for the interior of a comet. Copyright
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