Study Assumes Half the Water on the Planet Is Older Than the Sun

A study presented Thursday indicates that half of the planet's water may be older than the Solar System, which increases the possibility of life outside our Milky Way galaxy.

Using a sophisticated model that lets you simulate chemical formulas between water molecules formed in the Solar System and those that existed before, researchers at the University of Exeter in Great Britain found that between 30 and 50 percent of the water consumed today it's about a million years older than the sun.

The work, published in the journal Science, will fuel the debate over whether water ice molecules in comets and oceans formed on the disk of gas and dust around the young Sun 4.6 billion years ago, or come from of an older interstellar cloud.

"Now determining the ancient part of the origin of water on Earth, we can see that the process of formation of our Solar System was not unique and therefore exoplanets can form in those environments where water is abundant, " explained Tim Harries, from the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the British University and one of the authors of the research.

Given that water is a crucial element in the development of life on Earth, the results of this study may suggest that life exists elsewhere beyond our galaxy, the scientists pointed out.

"This is an important step in our quest to find out if life exists on other planets, " said Harries. The results "increase the possibility that some planets outside our Solar System (exoplanets) will have the right conditions and water resources to allow life and its evolution, " he said.

Washington

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