In a groundbreaking discovery, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has identified crystalline water ice in a young star system far from our own, 155 light-years away. The first definitive detection of frozen water outside of our solar system, this discovery represents an important milestone in understanding the evolution of planetary systems. Astronomers have found water ice inside the dusty debris disk of a Sun-like star called HD 181327, only 23 million years old—a toddler in cosmic terms. By employing the JWST's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), researchers identified spectral signatures of crystalline water ice in the outer portion of the disk.

The ice water was found mostly in the outer, cold region of the debris disk, a region that resembles our Kuiper Belt, which contains icy bodies, comets, and dwarf planets. The data reveal that more than 20 per cent of the material in the outer region of the debris disk is water ice. Near the star, water ice exists in lesser amounts, some 8 per cent in the mid-region, and almost nothing in the inner region, where the star's strong ultraviolet radiation is thought to vaporize ice grains.

Collisions Form 'Dirty Snowballs' in Space

HD 181327 is a very dynamic system. Ongoing collisions between icy objects in the disk produce fine dust particles infused with frozen water, also known as "dirty snowballs". These are precisely the type of materials JWST is well equipped to detect. There are steady, continual collisions in its disk of debris. When they crash, the icy objects emit small particles of dusty water ice that are precisely the right size for Webb to detect," Xie added.

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The find not only validates long-standing hypotheses regarding the existence of ice within debris disks, but also provide new avenues through which to comprehend planetary formation beyond our solar system. Ice is important in determining giant planets and can be delivered to terrestrial planets by comets and asteroids, as occurred on early Earth. The possibility that ice could exist elsewhere in the galaxy has been around for decades. In 2008, NASA's retired Spitzer Space Telescope indicated the presence of frozen water in the disk of HD 181327, but its sensors were not sensitive enough to verify it. JWST has now made that verification possible.

The discovery underscores the game-changing capability of the James Webb Space Telescope, which continues to produce high-impact science throughout the universe. A NASA mission in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), Webb is meant to study the beginning of our universe and to seek out signs of life-supporting worlds elsewhere in the universe. With the successful identification of water ice in HD 181327, astronomers are now likely to broaden their search throughout young planetary systems of the Milky Way, looking for signs of habitability and learning about the components of life on a galactic level.

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