A distant star system is assisting scientists in solving the enigma of how water appeared billions of years ago in our solar system.
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array of telescopes in northern Chile, scientists detected a young star dubbed V883 Orionis approximately 1,300 light-years away.
Disk Formed By Water Molecules
The star is encircled by a planet-forming ring of residual gas and dust from the star’s birth. During millions of years, material in the disk combines to form comets, asteroids, and planets.
V883 Orionis is a young star encircled by a massive disk of material that will eventually form into orbiting planets. Scientists have detected water vapor in that disk, spinning about with all the other dust and gas destined to become part of an alien world.
This implies that the water in the Solar System, including that now on Earth, was there in the gaseous cradle from which the Sun was born; that it was existing not just before Earth, but before the Sun, and aided in the growth of our planet.
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Comets Could Have Brought Water To Earth
Because some comets have ratios comparable to water on Earth, astronomers believe comets may have delivered water to Earth early in its history by crashing with the planet. Comets are massive celestial bodies composed of dust and ice that circle stars.
During their investigation of V883 Orionis, the researchers discovered a missing link between young stars formed from clouds of gas and dust containing water molecules and comets formed from the same clouds spinning around newborn stars.
The disk orbiting V883 Orionis is exceptionally warm due to energetic outbursts from the star, which converted the ice to gas and allowed the researchers to discover it.
In the planet-forming disk, scientists discovered at least 1,200 times the amount of water found in Earth’s oceans.
In the future, astronomers are keen to employ the Extremely Large Telescope, or ELT, and its first-generation equipment, the Mid-infrared ELT Imager, and Spectrograph, or METIS, for these types of investigations. The ELT is now being built in Chile and is scheduled to be completed in 2028.