The Significance of Comet Water

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All water comes with a particular signature, a kind of fingerprint. In the H2O, you just look at the H. Hydrogen is actually really useful for tracing where water came from. But that fingerprint in Earth's water doesn't match comets. We need to get that water from somewhere else. A lot of models suggest that Jupiter and Saturn moved right in towards where Earth is orbiting now. And then they went back out again.

Life as we know it needs water, but scientists can’t figure out where Earth’s water came from. Answering that question is just one piece of an even bigger mystery: “Why are we here?”

This is the first episode in our new three-part series, Origins, about the beginnings and boundaries of life on Earth.

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