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Updated: Apr 23, 2026

Removal of Exogenous Materials from the Outer Portion of Frozen Cores to Investigate the Ancient Biological Communities Harbored Inside
Published on: July 3, 2016
The ancient heritage of water ice in the solar system
L Ilsedore Cleeves1, Edwin A Bergin2, Conel M O'D Alexander3
1Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, 311 West Hall, 1085 South University Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA. cleeves@umich.edu.
Abstract:
Identifying the source of Earth's water is central to understanding the origins of life-fostering environments and to assessing the prevalence of such environments in space. Water throughout the solar system exhibits deuterium-to-hydrogen enrichments, a fossil relic of low-temperature, ion-derived chemistry within either (i) the parent molecular cloud or (ii) the solar nebula protoplanetary disk. Using a comprehensive treatment of disk ionization, we find that ion-driven deuterium pathways are inefficient, which curtails the disk's deuterated water formation and its viability as the sole source for the solar system's water. This finding implies that, if the solar system's formation was typical, abundant interstellar ices are available to all nascent planetary systems.
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