A University of Hawai'i team of scientists has received a five-year, $8 million NASA seed grant to investigate where Earth's water came from and what its origins mean for life in the universe.

NASA awarded 10 grants to universities across the country to look at the mysteries of how water is distributed in the universe and its relationship to life.

Karen Meech, principal investigator for the UH grant, said the NASA funding will attract other grants — worth potentially as much as 10 times the original grant — to help fund the research. The UH team includes 14 co-investigators, 26 collaborators and several dozen post-doctoral and graduate students.

Meech said the team's research will stretch across disciplines to include astronomy, biology, physics and even computer science.

The team, she said, will work to "understand the chemistry of things that could have brought water to earth." Meech added, "There might be chemical footprints on Earth."

The research could shed new light on how scientists understand the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe.

"What's really interesting is (that) how water got to Earth has interesting implications on all these other solar systems," Meech said. The team will conduct field research in Hawai'i and elsewhere.

Other research teams for the grants, which averaged about $7 million each, include Arizona State University, Pennsylvania State University, Carnegie Institution of Washington and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. As part of the grant awards, the teams have been named members of the NASA Astrobiology Institute in California.

The teams "will bridge the basic science of astrobiology to NASA's current and planned space exploration missions," said Institute Director Carl Pilcher, in a news release issued yesterday. "They are focused on fundamental questions of life in the universe, but their work has implications for all of science."