Icy Asteroid may Shed Light on origin of Earth's Water. Did life start on an asteroid?, page 1

a more scientific approach to findings

Are we star people? Did life begin here, or there? Where are we from?

I think the emergence of such evidence as this adds vitality to these questions; they become less speculative and more reasonable.

I don't know how to do the outside source snippet thing. So here we go:

Asteroids were thought to be devoid of water because they sit too close to the sun, while comets have been the water bearers of the universe because they form farther out in space.

"Astronomers have looked at dozens of asteroids with this technique, but this is the first time we've seen ice on the surface and organics," astronomer Andrew Rivkin of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, told Nature.com.

The scientific teams from Johns Hopkins and the University of Central Florida that looked at 24 Themis speculate that the ice may be held in a reservoir under the asteroid's surface. They speculate that the water is brought to the surface as small bodies in the asteroid belt hit the surface of 24 Themis.

The findings on 24 Themis lend weight to the idea that asteroids and comets are the source of Earth's water and organic material.

Icy Asteroid may shed light on Origns of Water

[edit on 29-4-2010 by we drowned]

[edit on 29-4-2010 by we drowned]