Thanks to observations of a forming star 1305 light-years away from our planet, the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory, coordinated by John Tabin, has discovered that the water we have on Earth today actually dates back tens of billions of years, i.e. when the Sun was not even born yet.
The photograph that revealed this detail was taken by the Alma radio telescope, located in the Chilean Andes, in the Atacama Desert. The results of the data analysis were then published in the journal Nature.
For the first time, in short, it was possible to analyse in detail the presence of molecules around a star that is still in the process of formation, making it possible to discover this particularity about water on Earth.
Thanks to observations of a forming star 1305 light-years away from our planet, the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory, coordinated by John Tabin, has discovered that the water we have on Earth today actually dates back tens of billions of years, i.e. when the Sun was not even born yet.
The photograph that revealed this detail was taken by the Alma radio telescope, located in the Chilean Andes, in the Atacama Desert.
The results of the data analysis were then published in the journal Nature. For the first time, in short, it was possible to analyse in detail the presence of molecules around a star that is still in the process of formation, making it possible to discover this peculiarity about water on Earth.
Observing the photo of the still-forming star, which has been christened V883 Orionis, the researchers recognised the chemical signature of water, composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, and distinguished it from water in which a hydrogen atom is replaced by one of its variants, deuterium.
These two types of water can only form under very specific conditions and recognising their respective percentages provides a kind of signature for knowing their age and origin. Something very similar would also have happened around our Sun: 'This means that water in our Solar System formed long before the Sun, planets and comets formed,' said Merel van 't'Hoff, an astronomer at the University of Michigan and co-author of the article in Nature.