Nusrat Jahan
Comet 67P is quite the little bundle of joy as it keeps coming at us with complex organic molecules and miniature space weather systems. Now, for the first time in astronomical history, molecular oxygen has been discovered in the comet’s feeble atmosphere. The oxygen is believed to be a remnant from the birth of the Solar System. Rosetta’s comet may be oozing out oxygen that’s as old as the Sun. The discovery came as such a shock, that scientists kept scratching their heads in confusion and denial when they first saw it!
This is the very first time astronomers have spotted molecular oxygen in the dust and gas mists surrounding a comet, otherwise known as coma. Scientists have been monitoring the oxygen intensities in 67P’s coma since last September, using Rosetta’s mass spectrometer. Oxygen levels were at a 4% constant. That’s notwithstanding the phenomenon where 67P launches en route for the Sun, burning up and losing gas as it goes. That free-floating oxygen should be disintegrating into the cosmic void.
This suggests that there might be an internal home of molecular oxygen reloading the coma as the 67P floats through space. Or at least that’s what the hypothesis printed out in the new Nature paper say. If there actually is any molecular oxygen in the core of the comet, it is most probably “primordial.” The oxygen source, as indicated by the hypothesis, has been there since the birth of 67p, which in turn means that it was there since the creation of the Solar System.
Now, the question is: how are the heaps of oxygen formed? Ultraviolet light radiating from the sun and unrestricted electrons are most probably the cause of forming oxygen. High-energy photons and particles aid water molecules in becoming molecules of oxygen. The newly-formed oxygen then gets confined in the ice in the dust grains, which then come together to form the comet. There the oxygen remained for millenniums. Just a while ago in 1840, comet 67P was in the remote areas of the solar system, and hence was safe from the sun’s destructive influence, but a bump in with Jupiter pushed it in closer. As it got closer, the heat extended into the comet, sublimates the ice, and releases oxygen. Quite fascinating isn’t it? A time capsule as old as the Sun itself, leaking oxygen we never knew existed!