WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 (UPI) -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected enough water vapor inside a forming star system to fill the oceans on Earth five times.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the observations provide the first direct look at how water begins to make its way into planets, possibly even rocky ones such as Earth.
"For the first time, we are seeing water being delivered to the region where planets will most likely form," said Dan Watson of the University of Rochester.
The star system is still growing inside a cool "cocoon" of gas and dust filled with planet-forming materials. The Spitzer data indicate ice from the stellar embryo's outer cocoon is falling toward the forming star and vaporizing as it hits the disk.
"On Earth, water arrived in the form of icy asteroids and comets. Water also exists mostly as ice in the dense clouds that form stars," said Watson. "Now we've seen that water, falling as ice from a young star system's envelope to its disk, actually vaporizes on arrival. This water vapor will later freeze again into asteroids and comets."
The research appears in the the journal Nature.
