An international study led from the University of Turku discovered phosphorus and fluorine in solid dust particles collected from a comet.
An international study led from the University of Turku discovered phosphorus and fluorine in solid dust particles collected from a comet. The finding indicates that all the most important elements necessary for life may have been delivered to the Earth by comets.
Researchers have discovered phosphorus and fluorine in solid dust particles collected from the inner coma of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. It takes the comet 6.5 years to orbit the Sun.
The dust particles have been collected with the COmetary Secondary Ion Mass Analyser (COSIMA). The instrument was on-board the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft which tracked the comet at a few kilometre distance between September 2014 and September 2016. The COSIMA instrument collected the dust particles directly in the vicinity of the comet. Three 1cm2 target plates were photographed remotely. The particles were selected from these images and finally measured with a mass spectrometer. All the steps were controlled from Earth.
The detection of phosphorus (P+) ions in solid particles is contained in minerals or metallic phosphorus.
Read more at University of Turku
