Large water reservoirs at the dawn of stellar birth
Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - 11:02
in Astronomy & Space
The European Space Agency's Herschel space observatory has discovered enough water vapor to fill Earth's oceans more than 2000 times over, in a gas and dust cloud that is on the verge of collapsing into a new Sun-like star. Stars form within cold, dark clouds of gas and dust -- 'pre-stellar cores' -- that contain all the ingredients to make solar systems like our own.