An entire ocean of water evaporates every month. A strange phenomenon in the Orion Nebula

The researchers point out that making this extraordinary discovery was only possible thanks to an original, multidisciplinary approach Combined observations from the James Webb Space Telescope and calculations in quantum physics.

As Els Peters of the Western Earth and Space Research Institute said: “It is very impressive that after a few pixels of observation and focusing on a few lines, we can actually say that An entire ocean of water evaporates every month. This discovery was based on a small portion of our spectroscopic data. It's exciting that we have a lot of the data we need and I can't wait to see what else we can find.

Water is an essential element in the creation of life as we know it. Most of the water on our planet was created long before birth Solar System. It was formed at -250 degrees Celsius in space. As the researchers point out, it is possible that some of this water was destroyed and reformed at higher temperatures during the period when our planetary system was still just a disk of material orbiting the young sun.

To learn more about this special Space water recyclingA team of scientists turned their attention to the planetary disk D203-506, which is located in the Orion Nebula. Studies have shown that d203-506 is A real interstellar laboratory.

It turns out Massive stars generate intense ultraviolet radiation that destroys and recreates water in the planetary disk. When water is destroyed by ultraviolet radiation, a hydroxyl molecule is created, followed by the emission of photons, which in turn reach the James Webb Space Telescope.

Researchers think so Every month, the equivalent of water in all of Earth's oceans disappears from the disk d203-506, and is then naturally replenished.. Furthermore, the James Webb Space Telescope has shown that the main intermediate in water formation, hydroxyl, is also formed in large quantities of atomic oxygen. Scientists believe that such a process could also occur in our system, leading to the formation of oceans on the blue planet.

The results of the research were published in a prestigious international scientific journal Nature astronomy.