It reshapes our understanding of … well, everything.
Key takeaways
- Scientists found that water in our solar system is likely billions of years older than the sun by studying the protostar V883 Orion, linking water from the interstellar medium to our solar system.
- Researchers traced the path of water from its origins in interstellar clouds to planets and comets, showing that water’s composition remains largely unchanged throughout this journey.
- The discovery of water on V883 Orion provides crucial evidence that water molecules in our solar system and in V883 Orion have a similar ratio of deuterium and hydrogen, highlighting an ancient and continuous water trail.
- Water forms as ice on tiny dust grains in interstellar clouds. When these clouds collapse and form young stars, the water ends up in the disks around them, eventually becoming part of new solar systems with planets and comets.
- This research suggests that water in our solar system was formed long before the sun, planets, and comets, indicating that planetary systems, including ours, should have received substantial amounts of water during their formation.
Water has a critical role in star and planet formation. Scientists discovered a “probable link” between water in the interstellar medium and water in our solar system by studying protostar V883 Orion, which is only 1,305 light-years away from Earth. This most likely suggests that our water is billions of years older than the sun.
“We can think of the path of water through the universe as a trail,” says John Tobin, an astronomer at the National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory and lead author of a new research published in Nature, according to a press release. “We know what the endpoints look like: water on planets and in comets, but we wanted to trace that route back to the origins of water.
We have a greater knowledge of that today. Prior to the astronomers’ study, scientists could relate Earth to comets and protostars to the interstellar medium (the space between stars), but not protostars to comets. The discovery of water on V883 Orion alters everything, proving that “water molecules in that system and our solar system have a similar ratio of deuterium and hydrogen.”
That implies the passage of water through the cosmos, as Tobin refers to it, is considerably longer and older than previously thought.
Margot Leemker, an astronomer at Leiden University and co-author of the work, explains in the news release:
“It is known that the bulk of the water in the interstellar medium forms as ice on the surfaces of tiny dust grains in the clouds. When these clouds collapse under their own gravity and form young stars, the water ends up in the disks around them. Eventually, the disks evolve, and the icy dust grains coagulate to form a new solar system with planets and comets. We have shown that water that is produced in the clouds follows this trail virtually unchanged. So, by looking at the water in the V883 Ori disk, we essentially look back in time and see how our own solar system looked when it was much younger.”
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers discovered that V883 Ori was just hot enough to convert from ice to gas, allowing for the research.
To draw the connection between V883 Ori and our own solar system, the scientists examined its composition and discovered that it remains largely constant at each stage of formation: protostar, protoplanetary disk, and comets.
“This means that water in our solar system was formed long before the sun, planets, and comets formed,” Merel van ‘t’Hoff, a University of Michigan astronomer and co-author of the work, states in a news release. “We previously knew there is a lot of water ice in the interstellar medium. Our findings demonstrate that this water was immediately absorbed into the solar system during its development. This is fascinating since it implies that our planetary systems should have received significant amounts of water as well.”
This is a significant step toward understanding Earth’s genesis. “Until now, the chain of water in the development of our solar system was broken,” explains Tobin. “Ori, V883, is the missing link in this case, and we now have an unbroken chain in the lineage of water from comets and protostars to the interstellar medium.”
