Space telescope detects water in a number of asteroids

[Lady Fraktor]

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 100407.htm

[helicon]

That's interesting. So some colliding asteroids may have gifted earth with some water.

[Unitron48]

Interesting indeed. Given the amount of water on Earth, seems like a very large amount of collisions!

Dave

[Gmetric]

Very interesting. So C-type asteroids form from an agglomeration of rocks and water ice which then go through an aqueous alteration transition locking the moister in the minerals. S-type asteroids form from a different mechanism and have little water but the analysis shows that water is deposited on them via collisions with C-types. From this, they suggest that C-types may have been responsible for depositing some water on earth via the same process (during the LHB/cataclysm period I guess). Wiki says this about the number of potential craters that may have been created on earth during the LHB/cataclysm period

"If a cataclysmic cratering event truly occurred on the Moon, Earth would have been affected as well. Extrapolating lunar cratering rates[19] to Earth at this time suggests that the following number of craters would have formed:[20]

22,000 or more impact craters with diameters >20 km (12 mi),
about 40 impact basins with diameters about 1,000 km (620 mi),
several impact basins with diameters about 5,000 km (3,100 mi),"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Heavy_Bombardment

If they can make a lot more measurements and determine a baseline for the amount of water locked away in asteroids at the moment, then approximate the amount lost over time due to erosion from the factors mentioned in the article, it might be possible to determine approximately how much water would have been deposited on earth. A lot of IFs but very interesting. Thanks, Gabby