Scientists found a comet with the same chemical composition as the Earth’s oceans, suggesting that comets might water the Earth originally, according to Reuters.

Prior to the new findings published online in the journal Nature last week, scientists believed that comets, which are essentially dirty snowballs made of rock, gas and water ice, smashed into the early Earth and then water was formed.

But they calculated that only 10 percent, but not all, of the water in the Earth's oceans originated from comets. The ratio of heavy hydrogen, or deuterium, to regular hydrogen was too high in the comets, according to The Time report.

In this research, Paul Hartogh of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and his colleagues, studied a different comet called Hartley 2, which originated from the Kuiper Belt lying about 30 to 50 times farther from the Sun than the Earth.

But the previous comets studied come from the Oort Cloud, some 5,000 times farther away, according to Reuters.

Hartogh said the Comet Hartley 2 had the same deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio as the ocean water.

“It means it is not true anymore that a maximum of 10 percent of water could have come from comets. Now, in principle, all the water could have come from comets," said Hartogh. (Agencies)

VietNamNet/Xinhuanet