Earth's Water Existed 135 Million Years Earlier

An illustration of the early solar system shows proto-Earth, proto-Mars, Vesta within the asteroid belt, and proto-Jupiter. 

The dashed white line represents the "snow line" boundary for water ice in the solar system. 

Credit: Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The water that supports life on Earth may have been on the planet much earlier than scientists previously thought, new research suggests.

While the environmental conditions in Earth's early years made it impossible for water to remain on the planet's surface, scientists have found evidence that the ingredients for water were protectively stored inside rocky bodies near our planet, and maybe inside Earth itself.

The new findings suggest that there was water in the inner solar system 135 million years earlier than previous evidence had shown.

"Our findings show the earliest evidence of water in the inner solar system," said Adam Sarafian, a Ph.D. student at the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts and lead author of the new study.

This image of the giant asteroid Vesta was captured by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on Sept. 5, 2012.

Credit: NASA

Meteorites from an asteroid
The smoking gun appears inside meteorites that once belonged to the asteroid Vesta, one of the largest members of the asteroid belt that sits between Jupiter and Mars. Meteorites from Vesta, dark chunks of cooled magma often as big as grapefruits, continue to be found in Antarctica.

Previous analysis found no water or water-forming ingredients in those meteorites, but Sarafian and his colleagues zoomed in on the molecular contents of the meteorites, and found trace amounts of hydrogen-oxygen molecules.

More than 4.5 billion years ago, or about 15 million years after solid bodies began to form around the young sun, water existed in the outer, cooler parts of the solar system, previous studies have shown.

But in the inner solar system, where Vesta and a young Earth resided, temperatures were far too hot and solar winds would send any water vapor to the outer regions of the solar system.

While the Earth grew and changed over the next 4 billion years or so, Vesta remained frozen in time, according to Sarafian.

"Vesta gives us a snapshot of what Earth maybe looked like when it was first forming," Sarafian said.

Do Auroras Exist Outside our Solar System?

University of Leicester planetary scientists have found new evidence suggesting auroras -- similar to Earth's Aurora Borealis -- occur on bodies outside our solar system. 

Auroras occur on several planets within our solar system, and the brightest -- on Jupiter -- are 100 times brighter than those on Earth. 

However, no auroras have yet been observed beyond Neptune.

A new study led by University of Leicester lecturer Dr. Jonathan Nichols has shown that processes strikingly similar to those which power Jupiter's auroras could be responsible for radio emissions detected from a number of objects outside our solar system.

In addition, the radio emissions are powerful enough to be detectable across interstellar distances -- meaning that auroras could provide an effective way of observing new objects outside our solar system.

Auroras occur when charged particles in an object's magnetosphere collide with atoms in its upper atmosphere, causing them to glow.

However, before hitting the atmosphere, these particles also emit radio waves into space.

The study, "Origin of Electron Cyclotron Maser Induced Radio Emissions at Ultracool Dwarfs: Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupling Currents," which recently appeared in the Astrophysical Journal, shows that this phenomenon is not limited to our solar system.

It shows that the radio emissions from a number of ultracool dwarfs may be caused in a very similar, but significantly more powerful, way to Jupiter's auroras.

Dr. Nichols, a Lecturer and Research Fellow in the University of Leicester's Department of Physics and Astronomy, said: "We have recently shown that beefed-up versions of the auroral processes on Jupiter are able to account for the radio emissions observed from certain "ultracool dwarfs" -- bodies which comprise the very lowest mass stars -- and "brown dwarfs" -- 'failed stars' which lie in-between planets and stars in terms of mass.

"These results strongly suggest that auroras do occur on bodies outside our solar system, and the auroral radio emissions are powerful enough -- one hundred thousand times brighter than Jupiter's -- to be detectable across interstellar distances."

The paper, which also involved researchers at the Center for Space Physics, Boston University, USA, could have major implications for the detection of planets and objects outside our solar system which could not be discovered with other methods.