Asteroid's parent body had liquid water running through it
Scientists just found that the asteroid Ryugu's original body had liquid water running through it more than a billion years after it first formed—much later than anyone thought.
This comes from samples collected by Japan's Hayabusa2 mission and shakes up what we thought we knew about asteroids and water in space.
How did the researchers come to this conclusion?
By analyzing lutetium (Lu) and hafnium (Hf) isotopes in Ryugu's fragments, researchers discovered signs of a huge impact that cracked the parent asteroid open and melted ancient ice inside.
That released liquid water long after its birth—and probably led to Ryugu itself breaking off as a new space rock.
A new look at how we got water on Earth
Turns out, carbon-rich asteroids like Ryugu might have kept their ice for billions of years, delivering even more water to early Earth than scientists guessed.
This could mean asteroids played a bigger role in forming our oceans and atmosphere than old models suggested.