The Ultimate Designer Water: Outer-Space Evian

Water, water, everywhere - its not just a theory anymore. Astronomers have cracked open a meteorite that dates back 4.5 billion years - to the birth of the solar system - and found tiny droplets of seawater, still in liquid form and capable of answering one of astronomys big questions: Was Earth born with water, or was water thrust upon it? Some scientists say water was created on Earth by happy circumstance, but others insist that it was delivered on comets and meteorites - and therefore might have nurtured life elsewhere. "Its no real surprise that there would be water left over from the formation of the solar system, but now scientists have it in front of them," says TIME senior science writer Michael Lemonick. "All water isnt the same, and the similarities or differences between this water and the Earths water could tell scientists a lot."

As soon as they can take a sip. The meteor plopped down in a West Texas backyard in March 1998 - and its taken more than a year for the scientists to report their findings in the journal Science. But the wait is hardly over. The bubbles of brine, trapped in crystals of irradiated halite (essentially table salt from space turned blue by radiation), are so small - about an eighth or a tenth the diameter of a human hair - that they lie beyond the capability of existing technology. Never fear; a researcher in Cambridge, England, is apparently on the verge of developing a highly precise mass spectrometer that might be able to tackle the problem. Until then, NASA asteroid specialist Michael Zolensky and his colleagues will have little to do except wait - and collect more evidence. After getting the word out to be extra careful with new meteorite finds (previous discoveries have been tainted by suspicions that they had become contaminated by water from Earth's environment), Zolensky has had another hit on a rock that touched down in Morocco. "Lo and behold, it's the same stuff in a different meteorite," he said. Everywhere indeed.