When it comes to life as we know it here on earth, there are several elements which we need to bear in mind – water and oxygen are two of the essential items that most life forms would require in order to survive at the very basic level, while a slew of other variables will also need to hang in a perfect balance. Hence, it is understandable that the scientific community is more than excited with news that they have detected the presence of oxygen on the Rosetta comet, and this particular finding could change the way we think about how the solar system was formed.
An international team claimed that they picked up “a lot” of molecular oxygen in the cloud of gas, or coma, which surrounds the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. This is not a new finding per se, as molecular oxygen is known to reside in Jupiter and Saturn, but on a comet? That’s something new for sure. After all, neutral gas comas of majority of the comets out there happen to be made up mostly of water, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.
Kathrin Altwegg, one of the co-authors on the paper from the University of Bern, shared, “It is the most surprising discovery we have made so far in 67P because oxygen was not among the molecules suspected in a cometary comas. The first time we saw it I think we all went a little bit into denial because it was not expected to be found in a comet. Molecular oxygen is very reactive. There was a lot of hydrogen around when the solar system was formed. Everybody and all models showed that molecular oxygen would react with the hydrogen and would no longer be present as molecular oxygen.”