Detect molecular oxygen in a comet – Televisa News

LONDON, October 29. 2015.- Scientists detected oxygen molecules in the nebula of Comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and although no one knows why, is an unexpected finding that could change our understanding of the origins of the solar system.

The detection of oxygen, which is the third most abundant element in the universe, is the first of its kind in a comet and was captured by instruments Rosetta spacecraft of the European Space Agency (ESA) orbiting this star almost a year ago.

The molecular oxygen (O2) has proved surprisingly difficult to track, but is the fourth most common gas around the comet, indicates André Bieler, a physicist at the University of Michigan and author main research.

“We did not expect to detect molecular oxygen in the 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko because it is highly reactive chemically, so it was a surprise,” says Kathrin Altwegg of the University of Bern and scientific the Rosetta mission.

“We never thought that oxygen could survive for billions of years without the combination with other substances,” says Altwegg, co-author of the research published in the journal Nature .

While microbes and plants are responsible for most of the oxygen on Earth, the new discovery does not mean that the comet 67P is full of life.

Instead this, scientists believe that oxygen comet originated very early, before the solar system had even finished form.

It is believed that high energy particles have freed oxygen by striking beans Ice cold and dense place of birth of the solar system, known as a “dark nebula”.

The oxygen would have incorporated into the nucleus of the comet when it was created about 4.6 billion years ago and maintained since then , the researchers said.

“This evidence of oxygen as an old substance likely discredit some theoretical models about the formation of the solar system,” says Altwegg.

In November 2014, Rosetta made history by deploying small Philae probe, which landed on the comet, and earlier this year, when the 67P approached the Sun, the scientists used a mass spectrometer to detect the molecules around the star.

In analyzing the chemical composition of these molecules, found that on average the O2 represents 3.8 percent of the cloud relative to the most abundant substance, water.

The researchers acknowledge that be More experiments needed to determine what really oxygen detection means.

Els