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The blue ball represents all of the earths water. Not that much...

Abstract: The young Earth appear to have been bombarded by comets for several hundred million years shortly after it was formed. This onslaught, perhaps involving hundreds of millions of comet impacts, is currently the best explantion for the origin of the Earth’s oceans, atmosphere and organic molecules. Although historically a controversial idea, there is now a considerable amount of physical and chemical evidence supporting the theory. Comet scientist Armand Delsemme reviews the evidence and argues that comets from the vicinity of Jupiter contributed the bulk of the constituents found in Earth’s biosphere.

Comet Hartley 2 contains water more like that found on Earth than prior comets seem to have, researchers say. A study using the Herschel space telescope aimed to measure the quantity of deuterium, a rare type of hydrogen, present in the comet's water. The comet had just half the amount of deuterium seen in comets. The result, published in Nature, hints at the idea that much of the Earth's water could have initially came from cometary impacts. Just a few million years after its formation, the early Earth was rocky and dry; something must have brought the water that covers...

Given the reality of the dark spots, which soon became known as "atmospheric holes" because of their appearance in the images, there is only one explanation which has endured over all these years to present. That is, the holes are due to the shadowing of the atmospheric light by an object above the atmosphere. This object simply cannot be a stony or iron meteor because the holes are very large, tens of miles in diameter. A rock of this size would provide a disastrous impact on the Earth's surface. As it turns out, water vapor is very good at absorbing...

Clandestine comets found in main asteroid belt 19:00 23 March 2006 NewScientist.com news service Kimm Groshong You do not have to look to the outer edges of the solar system, or even out beyond Neptune to observe a reservoir of comets. A bevy of the ice-containing bodies lies disguised as main-belt asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, claim astronomers from the University of Hawaii, US. David Jewitt and Henry Hsieh have dubbed the new population "main belt comets". They describe three objects with near circular, flat orbits in the asteroid belt that stream volatile materials, producing an observable tail for weeks...

What a powerful telescope had picked up as it stretched towards the night sky over Antarctica was the trail of dust left in the wake of the death of an asteroid... "What he didn't know at the time was that seven hours earlier an asteroid had crashed to Earth in another part of Antarctica, about 1500 kms west of Davis. The closest it got to human habitation was around 900 kms west of Japan's Syowa station," Dr Klekociuk said... Dr Klekociuk said that it was thought that the asteroid had come from what is known as the Aten group somewhere...

The Mars rover Opportunity's examination of Martian rocks last week provided the first convincing evidence that our neighbour world was once "awash" in water, as one NASA scientist described it. But where did the water come from? And why does Mars have no liquid water now, while Earth apparently has been covered with the stuff for 4 billion years? Scientists are just beginning to piece the story together, and it goes right back to the beginning. Mars, like Earth, was formed from dusty and rocky debris left over after the sun was born 4.57 billion years ago. Initially, there were...

ANNISTON, Ala., Aug. 12, 2005 – The staff at Anniston Medical Clinic here misses Naval Reserve Petty Officer 3rd Class Shannon Woodard when she's deployed, but they don't complain. "Shannon is a very good employee, so we kind of miss her when she goes," said Dr. Vishala Chindalore, a rheumatologist and Woodard's boss at the clinic, where Woodard serves as a medical technician doing everything from recording patient information to giving injections. "We're very proud that she's in the Navy." That pride is a two-way street, as Woodard sees it. Since the start of the fiscal year, she has been...

Israel downed 2 Syrian MiGs last September over sea SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM Friday, February 11, 2005 Diplomatic sources said Israel Air Force F-16 multi-role fighters intercepted and downed two Syrian MiG-29 fighter-jets last year. The sources said the dogfight took place in September 2004 over the eastern Mediterranean Sea. This was the first engagement between Israeli and Syrian fighter-jets since the 1980s. The sources said the air battle took place when Israel Air Force fighter-jets buzzed the Syrian city of Latakia, a port used by Iran for the shipment of weapons to Hizbullah. The Washington-based Reform Party of Syria...

Twelve-year-old Ilana Wexler was hanging out at home in Oakland's Rockridge district Wednesday when her friend called to invite her out next week. Her friend: Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. The invitation: To address the Democratic National Convention -- and the nation -- during prime time Tuesday night. "I was like, 'Oh, my God,'" she recalled Friday during a telephone interview from her grandmother's Brookline, Mass., home, where the national media were beating a path to her door. "I don't know what to think. I'm just totally blown away." Ilana truly will have something special...