Astronomers claim that the water was delivered by comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which collided with the planet in 1994.

A European Space Agency mission, along with NASA, found that there was more water closer to Jupiter's southern hemisphere where the comet struck than its northern hemisphere.

The water is particularly concentrated where the comet entered the planet's atmosphere.

Water at the bottom layers of its atmosphere is easily explainable but upper level atmosphere water was not until now.

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In the past 12 months we’ve gained increasingly good statistics on the incredible abundance of planets around other stars and their multiplicity. We also finally seem to have evidence that our neighboring star Alpha Centauri B does indeed harbor at least one world. It is by any set of standards, a great haul.

But I continue to be a bugged by the claims of ‘habitable’ worlds and ‘Earth-like planets’ that seem to beset many scientific announcements (including I’m ashamed to say my own). In the spirit of closing out the passage of our 4,500,000,000 th or so orbit around the Sun I thought I’d try to set the record straight, because I think we have so much more to look forward to than simply finding ‘another Earth’.

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