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Water
17 July 2008
Looking down from space at the blue planet Earth, you can see plenty of water. This water is believed to have originated from comets and asteroids that hit the surface soon after the planet formed.
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The search for water in space has been quite successful; traces of ice have been found on Mars and water vapour has been found in several places in our galaxy. Water vapour was also recently detected on a planet outside our Solar System for the first time. It was an important discovery, although the planet is far too hot to be able to support life.
Heavy water, which is also found on comets, poses the question of whether we can trace the origins of the water on earth through the heavy water found on objects like asteroids and comets.
The Herschel space observatory, due for launch within a year’s time, will help explore the theory that water vapour plays an important role in regions of space where interstellar clouds of gas and dust are forming new stars.
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