Last month , the European Space Agency landed on a comet 300 million mi away to take sampling that couldhelp unravel our solar scheme ’s origin . It release out there are pieces of comets closer to home , too . scientist have justfound comet dustpreserved in the frozen reaches of Antarctica .
Why the gravid hoopla over comet ? These stumblebum of ice and rock are some of the most primitive things in space ; they ’re like time capsules from the early day of our solar organisation . live the chemical composition of comet will supply clues into all sort of historical enigma , such as whether comets that crashed into the Earth help oneself sow the water and organic molecule that made life potential . worry is , comet sample distribution are hard to come by .
Landing on a comet is , unfortunately , a once a coevals variety of mission . More routinely , scientists collect “ chondritic porous interplanetary dust corpuscle , ” or comet junk by planing machine , fly in the stratosphere with plates coat in Si oil . It ’s middling ineffective . “ Several 60 minutes of flying time typically pay one particle of dust,”notesScience .

The find of comet rubble bear on in Antarctica promises an entirely new generator of this precious cloth . Researchers free-base at Kyushu University melt ice and C samples from two situation in Antarctica and finish up with more than 40 particles of comet debris . consort to Science , another squad had found unusually heavy comet particles in Antarctica in 2010 , but the scientist never expected distinctive comet junk , which is fragile and porous , to survive on Earth .
These microscopic comet fragment , which have survived in Antarctica all along , could have a major story to enjoin about the early history of Earth and the solar system . [ Science , Earth and Science Planetary Letters ]
Top image : Takaaki Noguchi

AntarcticaAstronomy
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