Latest news with #Telescopium
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
James Webb telescope discovers frozen water around alien star
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. 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.
Newsweek
15-05-2025
- Science
- Newsweek
NASA Just Detected Ice in Another Star System for the First Time
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has made the first-ever and long-anticipated detection of ice outside of our own solar system. The frozen water was found within a debris disk circling HD 181327, a young, sun-like star that lies some 155 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Telescopium. The ice is paired up with fine dust particles in the disk— forming what has been dubbed "itsy-bitsy dirty snowballs"—with more further out from the star, where it is colder. Astronomers refer to what we would call ice as "water ice," to distinguish it from other frozen molecules such as, for example, carbon dioxide in the form of "dry ice." "Webb unambiguously detected not just water ice, but crystalline water ice," said paper author and astronomer Chen Xie of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Crystalline water ice, Xie explained, is known to be found in various places within our solar systems—from some of the moons of the outer planets to Saturn's rings, comets and other rocks that make up the Kuiper Belt at the edge of the solar system. An artist's impression of the water-ice–bearing debris disk around HD 181327. An artist's impression of the water-ice–bearing debris disk around HD 181327. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Ralf Crawford STScI Astronomers have been waiting for such a definitive detection of water ice elsewhere in the universe for decades, based on the previous detections of water vapor out among the stars, as well as where frozen water ice can be found in our own solar system. "When I was a graduate student 25 years ago, my advisor told me there should be ice in debris disks, but prior to Webb, we didn't have instruments sensitive enough to make these observations," explained paper author and astronomer Christine Chen of the Space Telescope Science Institute, also in Baltimore, in a statement. Webb confirmed the presence of water ice around HD 181327 after hints of such were revealed by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope back in 2008. Chen added: "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." In fact, the team said, billions of years ago our Kuiper Belt was likely very similar to the debris disk around HD 181327, when our solar system was similarly young. "HD 181327 is a very active system. There are regular, ongoing collisions in its debris disk," said Chen. "When those icy bodies collide, they release tiny particles of dusty water ice that are perfectly sized for Webb to detect." With this study complete, the researchers will continue to search for other examples of water ice in debris disks and actively forming planetary systems across the Milky Way. "The presence of water ice helps facilitate planet formation," Xie noted. "Icy material may also ultimately be 'delivered' to terrestrial planets that may form over a couple hundred million years in systems like this." The detection of water ice elsewhere in the galaxy, thus, should well pave the way for scientists to study how these processes play out in other planetary systems. Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about astronomy? Let us know via science@ Reference Xie, C., Chen, C. H., Lisse, C. M., Hines, D. C., Beck, T., Betti, S. K., Pinilla-Alonso, N., Ingebretsen, C., Worthen, K., Gáspár, A., Wolff, S. G., Bolin, B. T., Pueyo, L., Perrin, M. D., Stansberry, J. A., & Leisenring, J. M. (2025). Water ice in the debris disk around HD 181327. Nature, 641(8063), 608–611.
