Carbon-Rich Water Discovered in Ancient Meteorite Provides Clues to Solar System's History

Researchers recently discovered carbon-rich water in what's described as ancient meteorites, playing a vital role in the solar system's early evolution and formation.

A Phys.org report said, water is abundant in the solar system. Even outside Earth, scientists have found ice on the moon, in rings and in comets of Saturn, liquid water on the Red Planet and under the surface of moon Enceladus of Saturn, and water vapor traces in Venus's scorching atmosphere.

To explore the role further, planetary scientists have sought evidence of liquid water in extraterrestrial materials like meteorites, most of which were derived from asteroids that formed in the solar system's early history.

Researchers have even discovered water as hydroxyls and molecules in meteorites in the perspective of hydrous minerals, which are fundamentally solids in certain iron and molecule water integrated within them.

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Carbonaceous Chondrite

Ritsumeikan University Visiting Research Professor Dr. Akira Tsuchiyama said, scientists further anticipate that liquid water should stay as fluid inclusions in minerals "that precipitated in aqueous fluid," or, to simply explain, formed from drops of water containing different other objects dissolved inside them.

Scientists have identified such liquid water inclusions inside salt crystals found within a class of meteorites called ordinary chondrites, representing the vast majority of all meteorites found on this planet through the salt, in fact, originated from other, more primeval parent objects.

Professor Tsuchiyama, together with his colleague wanted to find out if liquid water inclusions exist in a calcium carbonate form also known as calcite within a meteorites class identified as 'carbonaceous chondrites,' coming from asteroids that formed quite early in the solar system's history.

The study authors, therefore, studied samples of the meteorite, Sutter's Mill, a carbonaceous chondrite originating in an asteroid formed 4.6 billion years back.

Findings of the study entitled "Discovery of primitive CO2-bearing fluid in an aqueously altered carbonaceous chondrite," which Prof. Tsuchiyama led, was published in the prestigious Science Advances journal.

Carbon-Rich Water

The study authors employed advanced microscopy approaches to investigate the meteorite fragments of Sutter's Mill, and they discovered a calcite crystal that contained a nanoscale aqueous fluid inclusion that has approximately 15 percent carbon dioxide.

Result confirms that calcite crystals in ancient carbonaceous chondrites can certainly contain not just liquid water but carbon dioxide as well, resulting in a carbon-rich water.

As specified in this report, the existence of liquid water inclusions within Sutter's Mill has remarkable suggestions concerning the origins of the parent asteroid of the meteorite, as well as the solar system's history.

The inclusion possibly occurred because of the parent asteroid that formed with bits of frozen water and CO2 inside of it.

This would necessitate the asteroid to have formed in a portion of the solar system cold enough for water and CO2 to freeze, and these conditions would position the information site far beyond the orbit of Earth, likely outside even Jupiter's orbit

The asteroid must have been transported then, to the solar system's inner region, where fragments could later collide with this planet.

Essential Achievement for Planetary Science

This theory is consistent with the recent theoretical research of the evolution of solar system that suggests orbits rich in tiny, volatile molecules such as water and CO2 formed outside the orbit of Jupiter prior to their transportation to sites near the sun.

The most probable cause of the transportation of asteroids into the inner solar system would be the gravitational impacts of Jupiter, as well as its migration.

To conclude, the water inclusions' discovery within a carbonaceous chondrite meteorite from the solar system's early history is an essential achievement for planetary science.

Commenting on the finding, Prof. Tsuchiyama proudly noted, such an achievement shows that their team could detect a tiny fluid stuck in a mineral more than four million years ago.

In a similar report, EurekAlert! said that by attaining chemical snapshots of the contents of an ancient meteorite, the team's work can offer important understandings into processes at work in the early history of the solar system.

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