The pristine nature of comets

Abstract

Abundance considerations suggest that comets are likely to be the most pristine minor bodies in the solar system. In proportion to solar abundances, the present scanty data suggest that cometary oxygen is not depleted, whereas carbon is by a factor of 4 and hydrogen, by a factor of 2000. This implies that comets are less depleted in H, C, N, O than CI chondrites, namely 10:1 in hydrogen, 4:1 in carbon and 3:1 in oxygen. These results have been obtained by using dust-to-gas ratios in comets to measure the relative abundance of silicon and metals to volatile material, and the spectra of atomic lines, mainly from the vacuum ultraviolet, to determine the H/O and C/O ratios of the mixture of volatile molecules.