JAPAN: Every living thing on Earth depends heavily on water, without water, there is no life. Water was known to have been on Earth when the first living thing emerged up until now. However, scientists have recently proposed that water may have arrived on Earth via asteroids from the solar system’s periphery.
Scientists who looked at rare samples taken from the Ryugu asteroid throughout a six-year Japanese space mission made the statement.
To shed light on the origins of life and the creation of the cosmos, scientists are reportedly investigating debris that was carried back to Earth from the asteroid by the Hayabusa-2 mission in 2020. Hayabusa-2 is an asteroid sample-return mission operated by the Japanese state space agency JAXA.
The spacecraft, which is approximately the size of a refrigerator, was launched by Japan in December 2014 and touched down on the diamond shaped asteroid Ryugu, which is located 185 million miles from Earth and has the Japanese meaning “dragon palace.”
According to sources, the capsule put on a stunning show as it raced through the sky like a bright fireball as it came down to Earth in 2020 above the Australian outback.
The 5.4 grammes (0.2 ounces) of stones and dust were recovered by the Japanese spacecraft after it touched down on the celestial body and sent an “impactor” into its surface.
The source continued, “In June, one team of scientists reported that they had found organic material showing that some of the components of life on Earth, amino acids, may have developed in space.”
The mystery of how oceans first appeared on Earth billions of years ago may be solved by the Ryugu samples, claims current research that was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
A study conducted by researchers from Japan and other nations and released on Monday said that “volatile and organic-rich C-type asteroids may have been one of the main sources of Earth’s water.”
It went on to say that “there is still considerable disagreement regarding the delivery of volatiles (that is, organics and water) to the Earth.”
However, one important source of volatiles is probably one of the chemical compounds found in Ryugu particles and detailed in this paper.
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