"An artist's rendition released on April 30, 2010, illustrates a massive asteroid belt in orbit around a star the same age and size as our sun. Asteroids are chunks of rock from "failed" planets, which never managed to coalesce into full-size worlds. Asteroid belts can be thought of as construction sites that accompany the building of rocky planets. Scientists using NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility have detected water-ice and carbon-based organic compounds on the surface of an asteroid. That suggests that some asteroids, along with their celestial brethren, comets, were the water carriers for a primordial Earth."
NASA via AFP/Getty Images
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