Recently, researchers at the University of Michigan took a break from listening to Bob Seger and decided to glance up into the night sky. Upon doing so, those Wolverines happened to discover a space comet that, get this, has a good amount of frozen, ocean-like water inside of its belly. Christians Scientists have been working over the idea that a source outside our planet is what originally brought a significant amount of our water, to this planet, and the discovery of this H2O chugging comet strongly reinforces that hypothesis.
The comet is being called Hartley 2 and the Herschel Space Observatory is saying that the mass of water, inside the comet, has the same chemical makeup of our ocean water near Mexico here on Earth. (Yes, I capitalize the word ‘Earth’ and yes I realize it’s very granola of me).
We’ve never found ocean-like water in a comet before, and the scientists speculate that this particular comet originated in a different place than most other comets we see. This one, they suggest, came from the Kuiper Belt, the band of material just beyond Neptune in which Pluto is found, while most other comets come from the far more distant sphere of rocks and debris known as the Oort Cloud. [io9]
Just in case my writing hasn’t already made this evident: I don’t know sh*t about science. That said, I’m not real sure what the hell researchers do after making a discovery like this. I mean, I’d imagine they probably bump knuckles and then go to Dave & Buster’s. Lord knows that’s what I would do. Actually, that is what I do. And I don’t even discover comets. Hail to the king, baby.