NASA Makes Water Droplets Findings
06:50 PM ET 09/07/99
HOUSTON (AP) - Tiny water droplets that could be billions of years old were
found in a meteorite, the second found with water, a NASA researcher said. Droplets about
one-tenth the width of a human hair were found in the so-called Zag meteorite, a 300-pound
rock that broke into pieces when it struck a remote area of Morocco.
The water may date to the beginnings of the universe. Michael Zolensky, the
space agency researcher who found water in both the Zag and another meteorite that fell in
West Texas last year, said the discoveries suggest water may be trapped in many space
rocks.
``I bet you that it's going to be found to be a fairly common kind of
phenomenon,'' Zolensky said.
Zolensky and other scientists from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston
announced last month they had discovered tiny pockets of briny water in a 4.5
billion-year-old meteorite found last year in West Texas.
It provided the first close look at water not originating on Earth.
Zolensky's latest discovery came after he took a closer look at a small chunk of
another meteorite, found in Morocco in 1998. The water was found in crystals of sodium
chloride that the Zag and West Texas rocks both contained, Zolensky said.
