© Photo: ESA / Rosetta / NAVCAM
© Photo: ESA / Rosetta / NAVCAM / ATG medialab
MOSCOW, October 28 – RIA Novosti. probe “Rosetta” made a very unexpected discovery – it turns out that the gas “tail” of the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, there is a large amount of molecular oxygen, which fell into the bowels of the earth in the first days of life of the solar system, according to a paper published in the journal Nature.
“We never thought that oxygen can survive for billions of years in its purest form, is not connected with other substances in the interior of a comet. And even more amazing was the fact that the oxygen concentration is the same for all regions of the comet, that speaks about his incredible antiquity, “- said Catherine Altwegg (Kathrin Altwegg) from the University of Bern, member of the scientific team,” Rosetta “.
It tells Altwegg, the probe has made this discovery almost immediately after he arrived in the vicinity of the comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko in August last year, but scientists have long believed in the presence of oxygen, knowing that he could get into ROSINA spectrometers on Earth or with the remains of a rocket fuel.
© ESA / ATG medialab
Eventually, when planetary scientists were convinced that the concentration of O2 in space has changed with the distance to the comet, They tried to estimate its share of the tail and the atmosphere 67P and understand where it comes from and how it all came to a celestial body.
Initially, scientists believed that oxygen can occur in the “air” of the comet by the same mechanism in which he appears in the atmosphere of Saturn’s moons and Jupiter – a result of the “bombing” of the icy surface of cosmic rays and the decomposition of water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen.
This theory they were soon discarded, as it turned out, that oxygen is ranked fourth on the concentration and weight of all the gas in the gas tail of the comet, second only to water, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.
© Photo: ESA / Rosetta / NAVCAM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
As the scientists explain, the cosmic rays are able to penetrate only a few meters into the ice, which limits the amount of oxygen that they can generate. In turn, the comet is “losing weight” of 10 meters in thickness during each revolution around the sun, which severely limits the weight of oxygen, which can accumulate in the ice as a result of the decomposition of water.
Therefore, explains Andre Bieler at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (USA), or the concentration of oxygen was rapidly fall as you get closer to the Sun, or to remain low, which did not happen. It remains only option – the oxygen remained in the matter of comets from the formation of the solar system.
As suggested planetary oxygen got into the bowels of the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko at a time when it is a collection of microscopic grains of dust and ice the outskirts of the future of the solar system. These grains, like a comet today constantly bombarded by cosmic rays, which are saturated with their molecular oxygen. Subsequently, they merged and became the comet 67P.
© Photo: N. Thomas et al., SCIENCE, VOL347, ISSUE 6220 (2015)
On According to Biehler, the presence of oxygen in its interior speaks of two important things. Firstly, it proves that comets are actually examples of the primordial matter of the solar system, the study of which can help us to understand how the Earth and other planets.
Second, its presence suggests that the surface of comets and other celestial bodies primary could walk complex chemical processes required for the formation of the primitive sugars, amino acids, nitrogenous bases, and other “building blocks of life.” Paradoxically, the presence of oxygen and traces of these substances in the emission of distant planets can no longer be regarded as signs of the presence of life on the surface, as they have in the “non-living” comets, the authors conclude the article.
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