It turned out where water could have appeared on Mercury

Scientists know that there is water ice in the shadows of the steepest craters around Mercury's poles. But there remained

it is unclear how these water molecules ended up onplanet. Now a new simulation shows that incoming small bodies such as asteroids, comets and dust particles carry enough water to account for ice sheets. The research could provide the basis for new studies of water in exoplanetary systems.  The work was published in the Icarus magazine.

The fact that Mercury has water ice for a long timepuzzled scientists. After all, the planet has no atmosphere and is three times closer to the Sun than the Earth. As a result, water can only survive in huge dark craters on the surface of Mercury. However, it is not known how the water molecules ended up there.

The first author of the study is Katerina Frantseva fromThe Netherlands Institute for Space Research at the University of Groningen has developed an algorithm that simulates impacts of asteroids, comets and interplanetary dust particles on the surface of a planet. It turns out that over the course of a billion years, these bodies bring enough water to Mercury to explain the amount that scientists observe now.

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