Comet Catalina recommends that comets deliver carbon to rocky planets

In early 2016, a frozen visitor injured from the edge of our solar system past Earth. It soon appeared to stars like Comet Catalina before it slipped past the Sun to disappear forever out of the solar system.

Among the many observations that captured a view of this comet, which appeared near the Big Dipper, was the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a NASA telescope in flight. Using one of his unique infrared instruments, SOFIA was able to select familiar fingerprints inside the comet’s dusty glass – carbon.

Now this one-time visitor to our inner solar system is helping to explain more about our own origins as it is clear that comets like Catalina could be an essential source of carbon on planets like Earth and Mars when the solar system was formed early.

New results from SOFIA, a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center, have been published in the Planetary Science Journal.

“Carbon is fundamental in learning about the origin of life,” said the paper’s lead author, Charles “Chick” Woodward, a physicist and professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Institute of Astrophysics. “We are still unsure whether the Earth could absorb enough carbon on its own when it was created, so comets full of carbon could have been an important source in delivering this essential element that gave live as we know it. ”

Frozen in time

Coming from the Cloud Oort at the remotest parts of our solar system, Comet Catalina and others of its kind have long orbits so that they reach our celestial thresholds almost unchanged. This freezes them efficiently over time, offering researchers rare opportunities to learn about the early solar system from which they come.

SOFIA’s infrared was able to capture the composition of the dust and gas as it emptied from the comet, forming its tail. The observations showed that Comet Catalina is full of carbon, suggesting that it was formed in the outer regions of the primordial solar system, which maintained a potential carbon reservoir for spawning life.

Although carbon is a major component of life, the early Earth and other terrestrial planets of the inner solar system were so hot when they were formed that elements such as carbon were lost or depleted. While cooler gas giants like Jupiter and Neptune could support carbon in the outer solar system, the size of Jupiter’s jumbo may have prevented carbon from mixing back into the system indoor sunshine.

Primordial Mixture

So how did the incoming rocky planets become the carbon-rich world they are today?

Researchers believe that a small change in Jupiter’s orbit allowed small, early precursors of carbon-mixture comets from the outer regions into the inner regions, where it was introduced for planets like Earth and Mars.

Comet Catalina’s rich carbon assemblage helps explain how planets formed in hot, poor carbon areas of the early solar system became planets with the life-supporting element.

“Every terrestrial world is under the influence of comets and other small groups, which carry carbon and other elements,” Woodward said. “We are getting closer to realizing just how these effects on early life planets could be captured. “

Additional new comets need to be considered to determine if the Oort Cloud is high in carbon-rich comets, which would further support the delivery of carbon by comets and other elements that support the terrestrial planets. As the world’s largest aerial observatory, SOFIA’s mobility allows it to monitor newly discovered comets as they pass through the solar system.

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SOFIA is a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center. NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California manages the SOFIA program, science, and mission operations in collaboration with the Universities Space Research Association, with headquarters in Columbia, Maryland, and the German SOFIA Institute at University of Stuttgart. The aircraft is maintained and operated by NASA’s 703 Armstrong Flight Research Center Building, in Palmdale, California.