Earth’s water existed before our planet existed

The meteorite made it possible to trace the isotopic composition of water to the beginning of the solar system, in the interior regions where the Earth and other terrestrial planets formed.

French researchers have analyzed one of the oldest meteorites in our solar system, using an innovative method developed solely for their study.

His data show that there were two deposits of gas during the first 200,000 years From our solar system, even before the first planetary embryos were formed.

One such deposit consists of solar gas from which all the material in our solar system originated. Using the meteorite, scientists were able to directly measure its record for the first time. The second gas tank was enriched with water vapor and already had an isotopic signature of Earth’s water.

It was created by the massive flow of interstellar water into the hot interior of the Solar System, after the collapse of the interstellar mantle and the formation of the protoplanetary disk.

The early presence of this gas with an isotopic composition similar to that of the Earth indicates that the Earth’s water was present before the building blocks of our planet accumulated.

These results, led by the CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research) have been published in Nature Astronomy.