Astronomers are closer than ever to answering a long-standing question thanks to the advanced capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope: How did we end up with all the water that laps against our shorelines and pours out of our faucets on Earth?
“We want to understand our origin story,” said Dr. Tom Megeath, a Distinguished University Professor of astronomy at The University of Toledo. “Because water is considered an essential ingredient for life, it becomes a fundamental element in that origin story.”
Dr. Tom Megeath specializes in protostars as a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.
Megeath is a co-author and collaborator on recent research that offers a key insight into this story. A team led by astronomers at Leiden University in the Netherlands and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in United States announced this summer that they had detected semi-heavy water ice around a young sunlike star, strengthening the case that some of the water in our solar system formed before our sun and the planets.
The research is published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Megeath, an expert on protostars, is now poised to advance this research as the head of a project utilizing the James Webb Space Telescope.
He and a team of international collaborators recently used the observing time they were allocated on the telescope’s third cycle to zero in on a cloud of gas and dust that’s home to many more of those young sunlike stars.
As they now work through their resulting data, they’re paying particular attention to the deuteration ratio of the ice that coats the small grains of dust surrounding these protostars. Water molecules containing a hydrogen isotope called deuterium are called semi-heavy water, and astronomers look to the deuteration ratio, or ratio of deuterium to hydrogen in water, to estimate when and under what circumstances water formed.
The James Webb Space Telescope, with its unprecedented infrared capabilities, is quickly advancing astronomers’ ability to gather and interpret this data.
Megeath hopes to advance the discussion by analyzing and releasing data on the composition of the ice surrounding more than a dozen additional protostars.
“We can look to other young sunlike stars to understand what happened billions of years ago in our own solar system,” Megeath said. “If we’re right that some of the water in our solar system formed before our sun, then the water in my cup of coffee was floating around on little grains of rock some 4.6 billion years ago. It’s a fascinating journey.”
Astronomy is an area of research excellence at UToledo, which boasts an impressive record of engagement with the James Webb Space Telescope. Faculty and student astronomers have led at least one research project on each cycle of scheduled observing time since it launched in late 2021.
