Sentences with phrase «delivered by comets»

These gas - laden fullerenes were formed outside the Solar System, and their concentration in the sedimentary layer at the boundary of the Permian and Triassic periods means they were delivered by comets or asteroids.

Some of those materials, he adds, were most plausibly delivered by comets impacting the moon.

Another group has conducted experiments suggesting that the water at these depths was formed on Earth rather than being delivered by comets and asteroids.

Not exact matches

However, the Rosina mass spectrometer aboard Rosetta found that the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen in the comet is far greater than that found on Earth, adding to the growing body of evidence that the water on Earth was delivered not by comets, as previously thought, but by asteroids.

The meteorite is made of volcanic rock, and the presence of water in it suggests that crustal rocks on Mars interacted with surface water that was delivered by volcanic activity, near - surface reservoirs or by impacting comets, Agee says.

Most researchers believe that the origin of life depended heavily on chemicals delivered to Earth by comets and meteorites.

The enticing evidence was delivered by the Rosetta spacecraft's OSIRIS instrument, which snaps photos of the comet's surface with a resolution as high as a few centimeters per pixel.

«The detection of these compounds in comets helps to expand our knowledge of... the potential ingredients for life that could have been delivered to the early Earth or other planetary surfaces by comets,» says Jamie Elsila, an astrochemist at NASA.

While the origin of life remains mysterious, scientists are finding more and more evidence that material created in space and delivered to Earth by comet and meteor impacts could have given a boost to the start of life.

These ions, most likely from the comet, were accelerated by the highly active solar wind during the comet encounter and delivered into the martian atmosphere.

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), launched in 1995 by NASA and the European Space Agency to study the sun and its environs, has delivered an auxiliary benefit — discovering more comets than any other mission in history.

One possibility called out by the authors would be icy comets bombarding Earth after formation and delivering their own distinct cocktail of compounds and gases to an existing atmosphere evolved from a solar source.

This could be good news for life under the surface, as tectonics would deliver new material — including organic molecules deposited by comets — to this environment, which is otherwise completely sealed off from space.

The leading hypothesis is that it was delivered by water - rich comet or asteroid impacts.