Dec 01, 2021 14:00:00

A sample of the asteroid Itokawa suggests that 'the water of the earth may have been generated by the solar wind.'

A survey of samples recovered from the Japanese asteroid explorer Hayabusa , which returned to Earth in 2010, suggests that it may have been due to the solar wind containing hydrogen ions that brought water to Earth. I did.

Solar wind contributions to Earth's oceans | Nature Astronomy
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-021-01487-w

The Sun Could Be The Mystery Source of Earth's Unexplained Water, Scientists Say
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-identify-an-overlooked-source-for-some-of-our-planet-s-water-the-sun

70% of the Earth's surface is covered with water, but the mystery of where this water came from remains unclear. One of the most influential theories is that an asteroid called a C-type asteroid , which arrived on Earth about 4.6 billion years ago, brought about a hydrogen atom. However, previous studies investigating samples of C-type asteroids found that the hydrogen contained in the samples did not match the isotopes of hydrogen on Earth, so it was not the C-type asteroids that brought water to Earth. It is also possible that something is happening.

Luke Daly and colleagues at Curtin University in Australia investigated a sample of

the S-type asteroid ' Itokawa ' brought back by Hayabusa to explore the origin of water. When observing the surface of the sample using a technique called atom probe tomography, which can observe a size of about 50 nanometers, it is found that hydrogen ions brought about by the solar wind were buried in the dust of the sample. .. The amount was about 20 liters per cubic meter of rock.

'It is possible that the solar wind created water on the surface of small dust particles, and this isotope-light hydrogen brought water to Earth,' said Daily. It is also possible that the process of hydrogen attachment to Itokawa is occurring on other planets, and Mr. Daily pointed out that 'astronauts may be able to extract water directly from the dust on the surface of the planet.' bottom.