D-Bone
Aug 29th '07, 12:11 PM
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed a dusty star system being soaked with a "steamy rain" of water vapor.
The water, pulled from gassy stellar leftovers into a dusty disk, provides what astronomers think is the first direct look at how the life-giving liquid makes its way into planets. The disk is the same sort of thing that forms around many stars and, in the case of our sun, was the seedbed for planet formation.
The amount of water in the newly observed disk is thought to equal more than five times that of all oceans on Earth.
"For the first time, we are seeing water being delivered to the region where planets will most likely form," said Dan Watson, an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester in New York.
Watson and his colleagues' work will be detailed in the Aug. 30 issue of the journal Nature.
Read More: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070829_space_rain.html
The water, pulled from gassy stellar leftovers into a dusty disk, provides what astronomers think is the first direct look at how the life-giving liquid makes its way into planets. The disk is the same sort of thing that forms around many stars and, in the case of our sun, was the seedbed for planet formation.
The amount of water in the newly observed disk is thought to equal more than five times that of all oceans on Earth.
"For the first time, we are seeing water being delivered to the region where planets will most likely form," said Dan Watson, an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester in New York.
Watson and his colleagues' work will be detailed in the Aug. 30 issue of the journal Nature.
Read More: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070829_space_rain.html