Space enthusiasts know; From missions to the lunar surface to new discoveries in exoplanet science, it’s easy to get caught up in the many fascinating developments. But what really excites me as an astronomer right now is a largely overlooked development on Earth; This development could have profound implications for how we understand the evolution of life on our planet and one of its most unique features: our oceans.
Coming forward with little fanfare Vera C. Rubin Observatory In Chile, April 27 marked an important milestone in construction. telescope We completed a reflective coating on the main mirror, giving it the power to capture light from extremely faint objects in the night sky that we currently cannot regularly detect.
With this critical component of one of the most powerful telescopes in the world, we will be able to shed light on a question that has puzzled scientists for decades: Where did our oceans come from??
Relating to: How did the world get its water? Scientists now look to ‘hyperactive comets’ for clues
We know that Earth’s oceans are an important component for the development of life, but we still aren’t sure how they evolved. Some of us think that our oceans were handed over to us by ice. comets And asteroids From further out in the solar system. Similarly, the recently discovered ‘Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov It can tell us how oceans are transported to planets around other stars.
Some chemical properties of the Earth’s oceans are unlike what we would expect if water had been present when the Earth formed. Astronomers believe that the water must have come from comets after Earth formed, possibly from the farthest reaches of the solar system. Kuiper belt or Oort cloud. However, the European Space Agency (ESA) Rosetta mission Measured properties of the water in Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko revealed that these chemical signatures do not match those of our oceans.
Part of the answer may come from learning more about one of the biggest new mysteries in the solar system: dark comets.
We recently discovered seven dark comets hiding near asteroids. Soil. These objects disguise themselves as asteroids (rocky bodies without water ice inside them). But we noticed that dark comets accelerate in strange ways.
Comets are small objects, like asteroids, that contain ice such as water and carbon dioxide. When a comet heats up as it approaches the sun, this ice turns into gas and is blown away from the surface, creating a rocket-like acceleration and a tail of gas and dust.
These dark comets accelerate like comets, but they have no obvious tails to our telescopes. If they had water ice on them, perhaps they could deliver their oceans to Earth.
If dark comets contain water, they could be the missing link in our understanding of where our oceans come from. It is possible that they, or dark comets like them in the past, had water similar to our oceans.
‘Oumuamua It was the first large object seen passing through the interior solar system this came from another star system; Our first interstellar object. Like dark comets, ‘Oumuamua disguised itself as an asteroid because it did not have a distinct comet tail, but accelerated like a comet. We now think that ‘Oumuamua and dark comets contain ice that is invisible to us, and that these unusual ices are fueling their acceleration as they heat up and become gas.
Astronomers have discovered rocky planets orbiting other stars that could harbor oceans and life. We now know that these extraplanetary systems ‘We’ve thrown enough interstellar objects like ‘Oumuamua and Borisov into the galaxy that only a tiny fraction of them had to pass through our solar system. Just as dark comets may have given us our oceans, objects like these interstellar objects may carry materials essential for the development of life on rocky planets around other stars like our Earth.
Relating to: 10 exoplanets that could host alien life
RELATED STORIES:
— Mysteries of the dark universe may be solved by Rubin Observatory
— Climate change may be changing the color of Earth’s oceans
— Ryugu asteroid samples suggest messenger comets may be the reason there is life on Earth
The fact that we have recently discovered both the first interstellar object and the first dark comets means we are only at the tip of the iceberg. Probably many more of these lurking comets, both from interstellar space and native to the solar system, lurk unnoticed in our planetary neighborhood.
The Rubin Observatory is now one step closer to achieving much greater observing sensitivity than we have today. We will soon be able to find hundreds of interstellar objects in our solar system, as well as see the accelerations of many new dark comets.
Could dark comets and interstellar objects be the source of life? Earth-like planets? With the Rubin Observatory, we have the opportunity to understand these completely new populations in the solar system and potentially where we came from.
Darryl Seligman is a research assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy at Cornell University. His research focuses primarily on theoretical and computational planetary science and astrophysics.