Scientists studying a nearby protostar have detected the presence of water in its circumstellar disk. The new observations made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) mark the first detection of water being inherited into a protoplanetary disk without significant changes to its composition. These results further suggest that the water in our Solar System formed billions of years before the Sun. The new observations were published in Nature: “Deuterium-enriched water ties planet-forming disks to comets and protostars,” J. Tobin et al, 8 March 2023, Nature, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05676-z. Read the ALMA press release here.
Image: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), J. Tobin, B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF)