arXiv:1409.7398astro-ph.SR
The ancient heritage of water ice in the solar system
Early discovery. Linked by one identifiable commenter. This paper is outside the main ranking; a mention is not an endorsement.
Abstract
Identifying the source of Earth's water is central to understanding the origins of life-fostering environments and to assessing the prevalence of such environments in space. Water throughout the solar system exhibits deuterium-to-hydrogen enrichments, a fossil relic of low-temperature, ion-derived chemistry within either (i) the parent molecular cloud or (ii) the solar nebula protoplanetary disk. Utilizing a comprehensive treatment of disk ionization, we find that ion-driven deuterium pathways are inefficient, curtailing the disk's deuterated water formation and its viability as the sole source for the solar system's water. This finding implies that if the solar system's formation was typical, abundant interstellar ices are available to all nascent planetary systems.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.7398.pdf The paper cited in OA contains the physical model they used to simulate the dynamics and mentions the monte-carlo analysis they set up. I point students to Primo Levi's essay about carbon in his Periodic Table when they want to think…
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