In a major breakthrough, scientists have found large amounts of water vapour in a disk of dust circling a baby star. The discovery is important in astronomers’ quest to find signs of life in planets other than Earth. The water was found in the form of vapour locked up in gas and dust within the disk surrounding the sun-like star HL Tauri, located 450 light years away from Earth in the constellation Taurus.
The infant star is filled with enough water to fill Earth’s oceans three times over, according to space.com .
The research detailing the process has been published in Nature Astronomy . The discovery was made using the Atacama Large Millimetre/ sub-millimetre Array (ALMA), which helped scientists zoom in on the water vapour. This discovery will help them understand how water came to HL Tauri.
“Our results show how the presence of water may influence the development of a planetary system, just like it did some 4.5 billion years ago in our own solar system,” the statement further said. Science Alert said it is less than a million years old, and surrounded by a broad, cool, stable disk.
