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Register a new userDetection of the Water Reservoir in a Forming Planetary System
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Added by
Michiel R. Hogerheijde
Publication date
2011
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
Authors
Michiel R. Hogerheijde
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Icy bodies may have delivered the oceans to the early Earth, yet little is known about water in the ice-dominated regions of extra-solar planet-forming disks. The Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared on-board the Herschel Space Observatory has detected emission from both spin isomers of cold water vapor from the disk around the young star TW Hydrae. This water vapor likely originates from ice-coated solids near the disk surface hinting at a water ice reservoir equivalent to several thousand Earth Oceans in mass. The waters ortho-to-para ratio falls well below that of Solar System comets, suggesting that comets contain heterogeneous ice mixtures collected across the entire solar nebula during the early stages of planetary birth.
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