Planetary Disk in the Orion Nebula Destroys and Replenishes an Ocean’s Worth of Water Every Month, Study Reveals

Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) technology, astronomers were able to discover a cycle of destruction and creation happening in the Orion Nebula. It has nothing to do with gas or dust but with an ocean's worth of water.

Cosmic Water Formation

Water is a vital component of the emergence of life, as it is currently understood. Here on Earth, most ocean water was formed long before the solar system was born. Scientists believe that the water we have originated from cold regions of interstellar space at -250 degrees Celsius.

However, a small amount of this water could have been destroyed and reformed at higher temperatures (100-500 degrees Celsius). This event likely occurred when the solar system was still just a disk of gas and dust that orbited the young sun.

Annihilated and Reborn

To understand this mystifying recycling of water, astronomers focused on 'd203-506', a planetary disk about 1,350 light years away from Earth. Nestled within the Orion Nebula, the planet-forming disk contains water molecules that undergo a cyclic process of destruction and reformation. The details of the findings are reported in the paper "OH as a probe of the warm-water cycle in planet-forming disks."

The cycle was founded by an international team led by astrophysicists Els Peeters and Jan Cami from the University of Western Ontario. The researchers combined the James Webb Space Telescope observations and quantum physics calculations.

The study was part of the PDRs4All under Marion Zannese from the University of Paris-Saclay. It is one of the 13 Early Release Science programs chosen by NASA to demonstrate the capabilities of the JWST.

In just a few pixels of observations and by focusing on a few lines, the experts figured out that an entire ocean of water is being evaporated every month. This discovery was based on a tiny fraction of the team's spectroscopic data.

It was believed that intense ultraviolet radiation released by massive stars led to the destruction and reformation of water in this nursery of planetary systems. This makes d203-506 a genuine interstellar laboratory.

When ultraviolet light destroys water, it causes a hydroxyl molecule to be released. This is followed by the emission of photons, which travel to the James Webb Space Telescope.

A collaborative effort between quantum dynamics experts from the Leiden Observatory in The Netherlands and the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex in Spain is key to observing the formation and destruction of very distant molecules.

Using a similar mechanism, the James Webb Space Telescope reveals that hydroxyl, an important component in water formation, is also created in abundance from atomic oxygen. As a matter of fact, some of the water that makes up the oceans on Earth could have gone through such a cycle.

Before this discovery, scientists assumed that UV radiation from nearby massive stars could destroy all water in young star systems, making it impossible for life to exist. However, the surprising revelation about d203-506 indicates that water can be constantly destroyed and created even with strong light.