An worldwide research study led by the University of Turku found phosphorus and fluorine in strong dust particles gathered from a comet. The finding shows that all the most crucial aspects essential for life might have been provided to the Earth by comets.
Researchers have actually found phosphorus and fluorine in strong dust particles gathered from the inner coma of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. It takes the comet 6.5 years to orbit the Sun.
The dust particles have actually been gathered with the COmetary Secondary Ion Mass Analyser (COSIMA). The instrument was on-board the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft which tracked the comet at a couple of kilometers range in between September 2014 and September 2016. The COSIMA instrument gathered the dust particles straight in the area of the comet. Three 1cm2 target plates were photographed from another location. The particles were chosen from these images and lastly determined with a mass spectrometer. All the actions were managed from Earth.
The detection of phosphorus (P+) ions in strong particles is consisted of in minerals or metal phosphorus.
“We have shown that apatite minerals are not the source of phosphorus, which implies that the discovered phosphorus occurs in some more reduced and possibly more soluble form,” states the job leader Harry Lehto from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Turku.
This is the very first time that life-necessary CHNOPS aspects are discovered in strong cometary matter. Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur were reported in previous research studies by the COSIMA group from e.g. natural particles. The found phosphorus, or P, is the last among the CHNOPS aspects. The discovery of P shows cometary shipment as a prospective source of these aspects to the young Earth.
Fluorine was likewise spotted with CF+ secondary ions stemming from the cometary dust. The very first discovery of CF gas was from interstellar dust in 2019. CF+ is an ion now found on the comet and its attributes in cometary environment are still unidentified.
Reference: ” The detection of strong phosphorus and fluorine in the dust from the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko” by Esko Gardner, Harry J Lehto, Kirsi Lehto, Nicolas Fray, Anaïs Bardyn, Tuomas Lönnberg, Sihane Merouane, Robin Isnard, Hervé Cottin, Martin Hilchenbach and the COSIMA group, 25 September 2020, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staa2950
The research study was led by the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Turku. The research study was moneyed by the Academy of Finland.
