The researchers also found that nearly all of the minerals were completely absent of water. “Of course, [Comet 67P] contains water like any other comet,” said Hilchenbach. “But because comets have spent most of their time at the icy rim of the solar system, it has almost always been frozen and [the water] could not react with the minerals.”The research may also have implications for the origins of life here on Earth.A previous paper by the COSIMA team showed that the carbon found in Comet 67P mainly comes in the form of large, organic macromolecules. When combining this with today’s findings, it seems that complex organic molecules make up a significant chunk of Comet 67P. Therefore, if comets were responsible for seeding the early Earth with organic matter (as many researchers suggest), then these seeds may have already been somewhat complex by the time they reached Earth.