Science tidbits .....

[KichigaiNeko]

Across the Universe; from quarks to quasars
'bout one turn o' yer hourglass ago
If you live in a first or even second world country, you probably have an abundance of fresh water at your disposal. We take that for granted compared to the third world countries where fresh water is a luxury that is only afforded to the most well off portion of the population. Even comparing a first world country to a third world country, the Earth seems like a drop of water in the Sahara that is our solar system. It's something that is immeasurably imperative to our survival, yet Earth is the only verified place in our galactic neighborhood that holds oceans of liquid water on the surface of an extraterrestrial body. When looking for candidates of Earth 2.0, the Goldilocks region of a star where liquid water could exist on the planet without freezing or evaporating is at the top of our list of requirements.

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This is why the TW Hydrae system is of the utmost fascination to astronomers and astrobiologist alike. Located approximately 150 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Hydra, the planetary system belonging to the orange-dwarf parent star is in the planet-formation stage of evolution where terrestrial planets similar to Earth might be in the process of coalescing. What sets this alien solar system apart from the billions of them that lurk throughout the milky way, is that TW Hydrae rotates with its pole pointed directly towards Earth, which gives scientists the opportunity to observe the young star's disk of interstellar materials -- revealing the process of protoplanetary evolution in stars that are similar to our sun.

As for Earth, one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology involves speculation about the origin of the large reservoirs of water that are contained in Earth's many oceans. One of the leading theories suggests that comets and asteroids from the icy oort cloud were flung inwards to our solar system, crashing into the terrestrial planets and delivering vast amounts of the frozen water to our planet and its two celestial neighbors.

In TW Hydrea's system, astronomers used the Herschel Space Observatory to monitor the star and they discovered that there are traces of water in the young star's stellar debris disk. Furthermore, contained in the disk is over several thousands times more water present than what is found to exist in all of the Earth's oceans combined. Studying the ice's chemistry revealed that the ice likely came from a mixture distributed throughout the alien solar system, which gives credence to the theory that Earth's oceans may have been delivered to us via comet collisions all of those years ago.

- Jaime

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