Where does the water on asteroids come from?

Question

Asteroids are often covered in Ice, but where do they pick up this ice? Is water abundent in parts of space, or are the asteroids themselves factories, turning Hydrogen and Oxygen to waters?

Answer 1

Stars and solar systems form out of large clouds of dust.

"Dust" really isn't the best possible word for that, because a dust cloud on Earth isn't exactly the same thing, but it is close. Just don't go thinking that we are talking about the same stuff you clean off your coffee table OK?

The "dust" clouds we are talking about here are what is left over after stars blow up and go nova. The Sun is what we call a "population 2" star, in that it (and the solar system) formed out of a large interstellar dust cloud that resulted from the explosion of an earlier "population 1" star.

This is important because the way a star "Burns" is by fusion. Fusion turns hydrogen into helium, but as a side effect is that the star turns hydrogen into heavier elements as well (like iron, and oxygen).

So the first star here (the population one star) condensed out of a cloud of hydrogen, ( I don' t think population one stars had planets) but when it blew up it left a dust cloud that had a lot of hydrogen in it, but also a certian amount of other things as well.

Now gravity attracts things, and the bigger something is the more gravity it has, which means it attracts more things, which means it gets bigger, which gives it more gravity, etc.

Over time (millions or billions of years) this process caused the dust cloud left behind by the population I star to condense, as bigger things got bigger and started to attract more things. This is how the Sun and the planets and the asteroids formed.

So the water on Earth, and in the asteroids and on Mars and the Jovian moons etc. all came from the same place - the dust cloud (nebula) that condensed to form the planets.

Answer 2

Hi:

It comes from the Supernovas explosions and the many star deaths in our galaxy Which left over material was ejected from the dying stars During the Universe resent past before the Sun and the Planet of our solar system were made, Which carbon, oxygen,nitrogen and all the heavy elements of the the solar system. were mixed in. forming a very very huge gas cloud.

Then about 4.5 billion years ago either a nearby Supernova explosion, which eject a asteroid of sufficed mass entered this cloud and due to the electrostatic charges being generated by rubbing action attracted the dust particles toward it and attaching themselves to the object with enough mass to cause gravity to cause other dust particles to come toward it; as the more particle came; the bigger this thing got, the more powerful gravity got thereby causing a runaway effect until the object got big enough to when the pressure and heat of it reached 100 to 150 million degrees on the object and the Sun was born.

During this time before the Sun lighted up. The cloud started spinning and some particles that where spinning got hit by the farther in falling one going toward the huge object soon to be the Sun and they clumped together and they in turn started a runaway effect of the own but when the Sun when Thermonuclear it send a Shock wave thorough all the cloud and then; the Solar winds from the Sun pushed all the remaining gases from the cloud away from itself ( the Sun) .

However the objects that were of enough mass to resist the solar winds from the Sun continued attacting all the other object in itself and some of those things reached a big size; some large as planets or moons and they collided with one other until things settle down when they couldn't attact any objects to grow from.

And that how the planets and the Sun was born in our solar system however objects that didn't reach the size of moon or bigger they were thrown in to orbits around the Sun and they became the asteroids and comets depending on there orbits, and since all you need to make water is Hydrgon and oxygen and a electric spark which was in considerable quainty back than. This is how water was formed in the Solar system, as soon as it was formed . It quicky turned to ice due to the intense cold of space but when the Sun lighted up

The water that was on the planets closest to the Sun quickly evaprated into space, So the that Vesus, And Mercury has no water on them at all, However for a time the Earth had no water at all. But it was at the right distance for water to form. Due to geological processes and comets pass by and the formation of the Earth's atmosphere. Water was able to form and eventally cool the the planet down and when the Earth core generated it's Magnetic field. Water was able to stay on the Earth in all three states has we know them now. Father away the Earth; the Planets & the asteriods got very very cold and any water you find out there is in the form of ice, and that is how asteriods & comets get their ice or turn to water when they get close enough to the Sun depending on there orbits around the sun. And that is how the Planets, comets,and asteriods get there water from .

Answer 3

asteroids are known to contain various metalic compounds that may be worth mining when we have the technology to make it economically viable. Water may come fron passing through comet tails or the asteroid itself may be the 'extinct' core of a comet.
lots more on wikipedia.

Answer 4

Same place as water on earth did