Sentences with phrase «ice on a comet»

They've found that the ice on comets has deuterium concentrations very similar to the water in our oceans.

Alice also documented a surprising lack of exposed water ice on the comet's surface and identified an extremely volatile, unexpected gas in the comet's atmosphere — molecular oxygen.

They are thought to occur when the Sun's heat vaporises newly exposed ice on the comet, blasting dust off its surface.

When comets venture into the more intense sunlight of the inner solar system, the ices on the comet nucleus begin to melt and fall away.

Not exact matches

Combining high resolution images and infrared spectra collected during the probe's approach, a team of nearly two dozen scientists pinpointed three patches of water ice on the surface of the comet's «upper» half.

If sunlight must penetrate the dust covering a comet's water ice in order to warm it and produce jets, Sunshine says the Deep Impact findings suggest the ices on such dormant comets may not have run out but merely become sealed — by layers of debris, for example.

Still, Chapman says, he would not be surprised to see water ice on asteroids, adding that the distinction between comets, traditionally considered to be icy, and asteroids, which have been largely thought of as rocky, is becoming increasingly blurred.

The comet also contains more frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice, than has been found on any other comet.

Most comets are bright with brilliant tails of evaporating ice, and started life in the Oort cloud on the solar system's edges.

The Rosetta spacecraft has detected biological components glycine and phosphorus emerging from its comet - suggesting life on Earth could have arrived on a ball of ice

DARMSTADT, GERMANY — The Rosetta orbiter on Wednesday dropped a spidery, three - legged robot the size of a small refrigerator and watched as it tentatively set down on a comet — the first time that the surface of these primordial balls of dust and ice has ever been explored.

The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft has spotted an amino acid on the comet it orbits — confirming that a ball of ice and dust can hold a major building block of life.

Based on studies of comets, researchers believe that these young solar systems swirl with ice crystals and wispy gases that coalesce into gas giants like Saturn and Jupiter.

The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft has spotted an amino acid on the comet it orbits — confirming that a ball of ice and dust can hold one of life's major building blocks.

So it is possible that a crack has opened up on the comet's nucleus, which is less than about 3 kilometres across, exposing fresh ice to the Sun.

Such organic - rich ice may have arrived on Mercury through comet or asteroid impacts.

For five ices, including carbon monoxide and methane, the researchers compared levels on the sun - drenched side of the comet to the shaded side.

In addition to water, organic molecules, which could have been deposited on the surface by crashing comets, somehow would have to get through the thick shells of ice for life to form, a situation that puts Saturn's geyser - spewing moon Enceladus at the top of Nimmo's list of potential spots for life.

It is theorized that the process may be similar to what happens on comets, when water vapor lifts tiny particles of dust and ice off the surface.

ESA's Rosetta spacecraft has provided evidence for a daily water - ice cycle on and near the surface of comets.

Scientists have identified a ring of ice, dust and young comets around a star similar to our sun, shedding light on how our own solar system may have developed.

The comet appears to have undergone visible changes, including the changes in the size and number of surface features such as smooth patches, pits, and craters, and the loss of ice vaporized by the Sun or blasted off its surface by the Solar Wind into its tail as well as failing back on the object like snow, so that it appears to shrink, on average, by 25 to 50 centimeters (9.2 to 19.7 inches) with each orbit around the Sun.

Meanwhile, a different physical process in the comet's smooth mid-section was causing water ice to vaporize and flow through porous material to escape as a cloud of water vapor at the same time (NASA news release, and page on «fluffy snowballs;» David Shiga, New Scientist, November 18, 2010; and Astronomy Picture of the Day).

Ice on Mars, the Moon, and certainly on hot Mercury, should disappear faster than comets deposit it today.

which calculates effects of small impacts quite nicely, but after some experimentatiion, does not seem quite so good for comet impacts on ice.

And indeed it would be virtually impossible to show it was other than mere chance that comet impacts occurred at the right time, especially given that it would still be necessary to show that the ice sheet would care about comets, which we also consider unlikely (see the good discussion — particularly Mauri Pelto's comments — on this over at the Open Mind Blog).