Earth sciences: Water’s farewell gift
Nature Communications
2013년10월23일
The last moments of ancient water as it evaporated from a meteorite hurtling through space are identified in Nature Communications this week. These findings add weight to the suggestion that Earth’s water arrived from space.
Meteorites are chunks of bigger asteroids that have been floating around in space since the formation of the Solar System, 4.6 billion years ago. They are made from the first cosmic grains and may contain crucial information for determining the origins of both water and life on Earth. Yuki Kimura and colleagues investigated the magnetic properties of minute crystals in a meteorite that fell to Earth in Canada in the year 2000 to reveal the signature of ancient water that once existed in space. The team show that the magnetism of the tiny magnetite particles is such that the crystals could only have formed as the very last droplets of water dried out, leaving behind a unique watermark to be discovered billions of years later.
doi: 10.1038/ncomms3649
리서치 하이라이트
-
3월4일
Environment: Reservoirs account for more than half of water storage variabilityNature
-
3월2일
Evolution: Neanderthals may have heard just like usNature Ecology & Evolution
-
3월2일
Geoscience: Earth’s atmosphere may return to low-levels of oxygen in one billion yearsNature Geoscience
-
2월26일
Environment: Shifting from small to medium plastic bottles could reduce PET wasteScientific Reports
-
2월24일
Environment: European forests more vulnerable to multiple threats as climate warmsNature Communications
-
2월11일
Environment: Global CFC-11 emissions in declineNature
