Oxygen detected for the first time a comet – Digital Journal

oxygen molecules were detected for the first time, a comet, the 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a finding that surprised scientists and can review the models on the formation of the solar system, today released the European Space Agency ESA.

“We were not exactly expecting to find oxygen in the comet – and in such abundance -. because oxygen is so chemically reactive So it was quite a surprise,” he said, quoted in a statement from the ESA, the researcher Kathrin Altwegg of the University of Bern, Switzerland, which is involved in the mission of the European probe Rosetta, which studies the 67P comet.

According to the scientist, the discovery suggests that oxygen molecules may have been incorporated into the comet, during their training, which “is not easily explained by current models of the formation of the Solar System.”

The research results were published in Nature magazine and show that molecular oxygen found in the atmosphere ( coma or hair) of the comet may be older than the solar system, dating back more than four billion years.

Speaking to AFP, study co-author Andre Bieler, University Michigan, in the United States, admitted that may have to be “change current models of the formation of the solar system” since it “did not predict the presence of molecular oxygen on a comet.”

It is the first time it is detected molecular oxygen in a comet. The presence of this gas had already been confirmed in other icy celestial bodies like the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

The ROSINA spectrometer, one of the key instruments of the Rosetta probe, made of gas measurements between September 2014 and March 2015, when the comet 67P approached the sun.

ROSINA found about four percent of molecular oxygen (relative to water vapor) in the coma of the comet, with the rate manter- stable after a month.

Oxygen is the fourth most significant gas in the 67P, after water vapor, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. For scientists, this does not mean that there is life in the comet. However, believe that comets transported essentials of life to Earth during its formation.

Although the oxygen is the third most abundant element in the universe, its molecular version is hard to detect, even in gas and dust clouds which are born stars, since oxygen is very reactive, “bottom-up” to join other atoms and molecules (when combined with hydrogen atoms, so that water, for example).

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