Nature Communications (May 2017)

Dynamic molecular oxygen production in cometary comae

  • Yunxi Yao,
  • Konstantinos P. Giapis

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms15298
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 1
pp. 1 – 8

Abstract

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Abundant molecular oxygen was discovered recently in the coma of comet 67P, thought to be of primordial origin. Here, the authors propose a dynamic reaction mechanism for cometary comae, which produces O2directly in single collisions of energetic water ions with oxidized cometary surface analogues.