James Webb telescope discovers frozen water around alien star
In a milestone discovery, astronomers have announced that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has detected water ice drifting through a dusty ring of debris surrounding a distant, sunlike star.
Astronomers have long suspected that water, especially in its frozen form, might be common in the cold, outer reaches of planetary systems beyond our own. That's because in our own solar system, Saturn's moon Enceladus, Jupiter's Ganymede and Europa, and other icy moons are known to contain vast amounts of frozen water. Some of these moons are even thought to harbor subsurface oceans of liquid water, fueling ongoing discussions about their potential to support life.
Now, with JWST's confirmation last week, scientists say they can begin exploring how water — a key ingredient for life as we know it — is distributed and transported in other planetary systems.
The new discovery centers on a star called HD 181327, located about 155 light-years away, in the constellation Telescopium. At just 23 million years old, HD 181327 is a cosmic infant compared with our 4.6 billion-year-old sun, and it's encircled by a broad, dusty debris disk that is rich in small, early building blocks of planets.
"HD 181327 is a very active system," study co-author Christine Chen, a research scientist at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, said in a NASA statement. Frequent collisions between icy bodies in this disk are constantly stirring up fine particles of dusty water ice, which are "perfectly sized for Webb to detect," Chen said.
The findings, published May 15 in the journal Nature, suggest these "dirty snowballs" of ice and dust could eventually play a key role in delivering water to future rocky planets that may form over the next few hundred million years. As planets take shape within the disk, comets and other icy bodies could collide with the young worlds and shower them with water — a process thought to have helped seed early Earth with the water that sustains life today.
Related: Did the James Webb telescope really find evidence of alien life? Here's the truth about exoplanet K2-18b.
RELATED STORIES
—Astronomers discover doomed planet shedding a Mount Everest's worth of material every orbit, leaving behind a comet-like tail
—James Webb telescope could find signs of life on alien 'hycean' ocean worlds
—4 tiny, Earth-like planets found circling 2nd-closest star system to us — and could be visited by future human generations
JWST revealed that most of the distant star system's water ice is concentrated in the outer regions of the disk, where temperatures are cold enough for it to remain stable. Closer in, the ice becomes increasingly scarce, likely vaporized by the star's ultraviolet radiation or locked away in larger rocky bodies known as planetesimals, which remain invisible to JWST's infrared instruments.
According to the research team, the debris disk around HD 181327 resembles what the Kuiper Belt — the vast, doughnut-shaped region of icy bodies beyond Neptune — likely looked like billions of years ago during the early stages of our solar system's evolution.
"What's most striking is that this data looks similar to the telescope's other recent observations of Kuiper Belt objects in our own solar system," Chen said in the statement.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
NASA Announces It Will Be Randomly Searching Employees
As NASA reels from massive budget cuts by Donald Trump's White House, the space agency seems to be clamping down hard on physical security measures. An internal memo shared by Keith Cowing, a former NASA astrobiologist who now blogs about the agency at NASA Watch, shows that all personnel and their property are now subject to random inspection by security officers. The random searches went into effect on July 30, the day the memo was sent out, and encompass the inspection of "individuals, belongings, and vehicles entering or exiting the premises" of all NASA centers. Employees at the NASA headquarters in Washington DC, sometimes called "the little White House," received a specific notice tailored to the facility. "When randomly selected in the West Lobby, individuals will be asked to walk through the metal detector," the memo declares, presumably addressing both incoming and outgoing workers. "In the East Lobby [home to the Earth Information Center], an officer will use a hand-held metal detector." "If the individual is carrying personal effects, those items will also be searched by the officer," it continues. Vehicles are likewise subject to random probes. "When randomly selected, individuals will be notified upon entry to pull over and asked to step out of the vehicle," the memo says. "Once the random search is complete, the individual will return to their vehicle and proceed to the parking garage. The estimated search time will be less than 5 minutes." That memo comes months after NASA was caught purchasing a license to use Clearview AI — a controversial digital surveillance startup — throughout its facilities. Random searches aren't necessarily unheard of in industries deemed critical for national development. Private companies like DOW Chemical, Genentech, and Lockheed Martin routinely engage in random employee inspections, often employing x-ray scanners, canines, and even autonomous drones to surveil workers. While the scrutiny may seem reasonable from a corporate point of view, random employee searches are legally dubious. They've led to lawsuits like Boutin v. Exxon Mobil Corp, in which a contract worker alleged Exxon had fired her in retaliation for complaining about sexual harassment on the job site, using a random inspection as justification. Some legal groups argue that employee inspections serve to reinforce employer's control over their workers, blurring the lines between personal and private property. Random searches are especially problematic, because the employer has no justification for suspecting the chosen workers of any type of misconduct. As far as NASA is concerned, the timing of the new security initiative is noteworthy, coming as thousands of senior employees are being asked to pack their bags and leave the agency for good. That in mind, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how NASA leadership could justify the move. For example, a career Extravehicular Activity Suit Systems Engineer might have few other job prospects outside of NASA, and insider secrets can fetch a pretty penny. (In 2023, a lawsuit filed in federal court accused Boeing of stealing "billions of dollars" worth of trade secrets related to NASA's Artemis program.) However, there's an easy way to prevent the leak of NASA secrets, as Cowing notes: "treat [your remaining workers] as the valuable individuals that they are — not sheep for you to scare whenever you get a memo from the White House." More on NASA: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Reportedly Holding "Going Out of Business Sale" for Satellites Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
White House Orders NASA to Destroy Important Satellite
The White House has instructed NASA employees to terminate two major, climate change-focused satellite missions. As NPR reports, Trump officials reached out to the space agency to draw up plans for terminating the two missions, called the Orbiting Carbon Observatories. They've been collecting widely-used data, providing both oil and gas companies and farmers with detailed information about the distribution of carbon dioxide and how it can affect crop health. One is attached to the International Space Station, and the other is collecting data as a stand-alone satellite. The latter would meet its permanent demise after burning up in the atmosphere if the mission were to be terminated. We can only speculate as to why the Trump administration wants to end the missions. But considering president Donald Trump's staunch climate change denial and his administration's efforts to deal the agency's science directorate a potentially existential blow, it's not difficult to speculate. Worse yet, the two observatories had been expected to function for many more years, scientists working on them told NPR. A 2023 review by NASA concluded that the data they'd been providing had been "of exceptionally high quality." The observatories provide detailed carbon dioxide measurements across various locations, allowing scientists to get a detailed glimpse of how human activity is affecting greenhouse gas emissions. Former NASA employee David Crisp, who worked on the Orbiting Carbon Observatories' instruments, told NPR that current staffers reached out to him. "They were asking me very sharp questions," he said. "The only thing that would have motivated those questions was [that] somebody told them to come up with a termination plan." Crisp said it "makes no economic sense to terminate NASA missions that are returning incredibly valuable data," pointing out it costs only $15 million per year to maintain both observatories, a tiny fraction of the agency's $25.4 billion budget. Other scientists who've used data from the missions have also been asked questions related to terminating the missions. The two observatories are only two of dozens of space missions facing existential threats in the form of the Trump administration's proposed 2026 fiscal year budget. Countless scientists have been outraged by the proposal, arguing it could precipitate an end to the United States' leadership in space. Lawmakers have since drawn up a counteroffer that would keep NASA's budget roughly in line with this year's. "We rejected cuts that would have devastated NASA science by 47 percent and would have terminated 55 operating and planned missions," said senator and top appropriator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) in a July statement, as quoted by Bloomberg. Simply terminating Earth-monitoring missions to pursue an anti-science agenda could be a massive self-own, lawmakers say — and potentially breaking laws as well by overriding existing, allocated budgets. "Eliminating funds or scaling down the operations of Earth-observing satellites would be catastrophic and would severely impair our ability to forecast, manage, and respond to severe weather and climate disasters," House representative and Committee on Science, Space and Technology ranking member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) told NPR. "The Trump administration is forcing the proposed cuts in its FY26 budget request on already appropriated FY25 funds," she added. "This is illegal." More on NASA: NASA Announces It Will Be Randomly Searching Employees
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Artemis II on track for moon flight, looking to launch as early as February 2026
The crew of 4 astronauts undertaking NASA's 2026 Artemis II mission say the moon flight is on track for its launch next year. Speaking at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on July 30, the crew say there are possible openings for a launch in February.