An ancient meteorite that crash-landed on a U.K. driveway may have solved the mystery of where Earth’s water came from.
The 4.6 billion-year-old space rock, which landed in front of a family home in the English town of Winchcombe in February 2021, contains water that closely resembles the chemical composition of water found on Earth — presenting a possible explanation for how our planet was seeded with the life-giving substance.
When the rocky inner planets of the young solar system first coalesced — clotting from the hot clouds of gas and dust billowing near the sun — they were too close to our star for oceans to form. In fact, past a certain point called the frost line, no ice could escape evaporation, making the young Earth a barren and inhospitable landscape. Scientists think this changed after Earth cooled, when a barrage of icy asteroids from the outer solar system brought frozen water to our planet to melt. Now, a new analysis of the Winchcombe meteorite, published Nov. 16 in the journal Science Advances, has lent weight to this theory.
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