Surprising finding comet suggests another source for Solar System

Through the space probe Rosetta, researchers found oxigência molecule cloud of gas surrounding comet

A new discovery is puzzling scientists about the origin of the solar system. The space probe Rosetta has identified a molecule of oxygen in the gas cloud surrounding the comet she is studying between Earth and Jupiter - called 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The discovery, published in the scientific journal Nature, was a great surprise to researchers who thought that oxygen would react with other elements when the planets were forming. The result indicates that the current ideas that scientists had so far on the origin and formation of the solar system may even be wrong.

Rosetta researchers used a tool to "sniff" the atmosphere around the comet. The probe was launched in 2004 and reached its target last year - since then, scientists have studied the information brought by it.

Solar system

Researchers at NASA (US space agency) found that oxygen was the fourth most common gas around the comet, after water vapor, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.


One of the scientists involved, Kathrin Altwegg, the University of Bern, said that initially the researchers even thought that what they had seen on the sonar information was a mistake. "When we saw it for the first time, we had a first reaction of denial because it was not something we expected to find in a comet," he said.




Oxygen reacts more easily with other elements to form other compounds and does not usually stay in their unique way. The researchers suggest that oxygen must be frozen very quickly and got stuck on pieces of material in the early formation of the solar system. "It was the most surprising finding we made so far (on the comet)," Altwegg said. "The biggest question that remains now is how it got there."

Several current theories of how planets and comets formed around the sun suggest a violent process that would have warmed the frozen oxygen - and he would then react with other elements.

The suggestion now is that the formation of the solar system must have been a much quieter process than he imagined. "If we have oxygen in the early training of the comet, as he survived for so long?" Said one of the study's authors, Andre Bieler, the University of Michigan.

"All the information we had so far showed that (oxygen) could not survive for so long, and it tells us something about the origin of the solar system - but the process needs to be much more quiet - not violent, as he was before - to build these ice grains, because it seems that is a fairly untouched stuff yet. ""Now we have evidence that this significant part of the comet actually survived the formation of the solar system."