There Is Water Steam In The Zone Forming A Rock Planet, Can Humans Inhabit?

Astronomers managed to detect the water vapor in the protoplanetary disk (doc. nasa)

JAKARTA - Astronomers managed to detect the inner water vapor of the protoplanetary disk, where rocky planets may have formed for the first time thanks to data from NASA's James Webb Telescope.

Located in 370 light-years, the planet's system, dubbed PDS 70, was discovered thanks to a new measurement of the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) owned by the Webb Telescope, housing the inner disk and outer disk of gas and dust.

The two disks are separated by a 5 billion-mile-wide gap, and within that gap there are two gas giant planets, a sign that matter is uniting to create a new world.

They, astronomers also say they have seen water vapor in the inner area of the disk before the gap, where rocky terrestrial planets may have been born.

"We've seen water in other disks, but not too close and in the system where planets are gathering today. We can't make measurements like this before Webb," said lead author of research Giulia Perotti of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), quoted from NASA's official website, Monday, July 31.

PDS 70 is a K-type star, cooler than the Sun and is estimated to be 5.4 million years old. This star is relatively old in terms of a star with a planet-forming disk, which makes the discovery of water vapor surprising.

Over time, the gas and dust content of the planet-forming disk decreased. Either the radiation of the central star and the wind blow the material, or the dust grows into a larger object, eventually forming a planet.

"This discovery is very interesting, because it investigates areas where rocky planets similar to Earth are usually formed," said MPIA director Thomas Henning, co-author of the paper, which has been published in the journal Nature, recently.

As previous studies failed to detect water in the central region of the disk of the same age, astronomers suspected it might not be able to withstand the hard stellar radiation, leading to dry environments for the formation of any rocky planets.

Astronomers have not detected the presence of planets formed in the inner disk of PDS 70. However, they see raw materials to build a rocky world in the form of silicates.

The detection of water vapor implies that if rocky planets form there, they will have water available from the start. The discovery raises questions about where water comes from.

Furthermore, astronomers then considered two different scenarios to explain their findings. First, water molecules form on-site, where they detect them when hydrogen and oxygen atoms are standing.

Second, it is possible that ice-coated dust particles are transported from a cold outer disk to a hot inner disk, where water ice melts and turns into vapor. Such a transportation system would be surprising, as dust had to pass through a large gap engraved by two giant planets.

Another question raised by this discovery is about how water can hold so close to the star, when the star's ultraviolet light has to break down the water molecule.

Apparently, surrounding materials such as dust and other water molecules function as protective shields. As a result, water detected in the inner disk of PDS 70 can survive destruction.

For further research, astronomers will use two more Webb Telescope, Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instruments to study the PDS 70 system in an effort to gain greater understanding.