A new analysis of a comet in the asteroid belt reveals frozen water from the early solar system, hinting at the origins of water on Earth.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is probably best known for peering deep into the early cosmos, searching for the universe's oldest stars. But it's also making amazing discoveries right in our own cosmic backyard.
Dubbed Comet Read, the object is surrounded by a haze of gas and dust called a halo. When the JWST analyzed this halo using a specialized near-infrared instrument that detects heat, it found that the gas was composed largely of water vapor, implying that the comet's heart likely contains frozen water from the early solar system, potentially originating 4.5 billion years ago. But weirdly, the halo contained virtually no carbon dioxide, a major ingredient in most known comets.
Comet Read's missing carbon dioxide, however, presents a bigger mystery. It could be that Read, for some reason, simply formed without any CO2. Or it's possible that it had carbon dioxide early in its life but that the volatile compound burned away over time due to the sun's heat. —The James Webb Telescope detected the coldest ice in the known universe – and it contains the building blocks of life"Being in the asteroid belt for a long time could do it — carbon dioxide vaporizes more easily than water ice, and could percolate out over billions of years," Michael Kelley , an astronomer at the University of Maryland and lead author of the study, said in a statement .
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