With the meteorite, the researchers were able to measure its record straight for the very first time ever. The 2nd gas reservoir was enriched in water vapor and already had the isotopic signature of terrestrial water. It was produced by a huge increase of interstellar water in the hot internal regions of the solar system, upon the collapse of the interstellar envelope and the development of the protoplanetary disc.
The early presence of this gas with Earth-like isotopic structure suggests that Earths water existed before the accretion of the first constituent blocks of our world. These findings are published in Nature Astronomy.
Reference: “Determination of the preliminary hydrogen isotopic composition of the planetary system” by J. Aléon, D. Lévy, A. Aléon-Toppani, H. Bureau, H. Khodja and F. Brisset, 3 February 2022, Nature Astronomy.DOI: 10.1038/ s41550-021-01595-7.
To comprehend how life emerged, researchers investigate the chemistry of carbon and water. When it comes to water, they track the various kinds, or isotopes, of its constituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms over the history of the universe, like a giant witch hunt.
Scientists from the CNRS, Paris-Saclay University, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), and the University of Pau and the Pays de lAdour (UPPA), with support from the Muséum National dHistoire Naturelle (MNHN), have actually followed the path of the isotopic composition of water back to the start of the planetary system, in the inner areas where Earth and the other terrestrial worlds were formed. They did this by evaluating one of the oldest meteorites of our solar system, using an innovative method developed just for their research study.
Their information reveal that two gas tanks existed throughout the very first 200,000 years of our planetary system, even before the development of the earliest planetary embryos. One of these tanks consisted of the solar gas in which all the matter of our planetary system originated.