Water,
which is one of the most important element of life on Earth, has been recently
detected outside our Solar system in the form of gas and ice crusted on tiny
dust grains near sites of active star formation and on proto-planetary discs
which are accomplished of forming alien planetary systems.
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| Herschel observations |
The new Herschel observations of a cold
pre-stellar core in the assemblage of Taurus known as Lynds 1544 are the first
detection of water vapor in a molecular cloud on the threshold of star
formation. The water vapor discovered does amount more than 2000 Earth oceans,
generally enlightened from icy dust grains by high-energy cosmic rays passing
through the cloud. "To produce that amount of vapour, there must be a lot
of water ice in the cloud, more than three million frozen Earth oceans'
worth," Paola Caselli from the University of Leeds, UK, lead author of the
paper reporting the results in Astrophysical Journal Letters, was quoted.
"Before our observations, the
understanding was that all the water was frozen onto dust grains because it was
too cold to be in the gas phase and so we could not measure it. "Now we
will need to review our understanding of the chemical processes in this dense
region and, in particular, the importance of cosmic rays to maintain some
amount of water vapor" he added. The observations also exposed that the
water molecules are flowing towards the heart of the cloud where a new star
will probably form, indicating that gravitational collapse has just started.
"There is absolutely no sign of stars in
this dark cloud today, but by looking at the water molecules, we can see
evidence of motion inside the region that can be understood as collapse of the
whole cloud towards the centre," says Dr Caselli.
Source-Physorg.com
Image courtesy-myscience.cc
