One oceans' worth of water destroyed every month in Orion Nebula, researchers say

An international team of astrophysicists, including from London, Ont.’s Western University, are using the James Webb Space Telescope to reveal the destruction of one oceans’ worth of water every month in a planetary nursery in the Orion Nebula.

An international team of astrophysicists, including from London, Ont.’s Western University, are using the James Webb Space Telescope to reveal the destruction of one oceans’ worth of water every month in a planetary nursery in the Orion Nebula.

According to a news release from Western University, an international team, including Western astrophysicists Els Peeters and Jan Cami, have discovered the destruction and re-formation of a large volume of water in a planet-forming disk located at the heart of the Orion Nebula.

The discovery was made by combining observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and quantum physics calculations.

The study, a part of the PDRs4All Early Release Science program and led by University Paris-Saclay PhD student Marion Zannese, was recently published in Nature Astronomy.

A total of 13 Early Release Science programs were selected by NASA to demonstrate the capabilities of the JWST, with PDRs4All being of one those selected.

“It is so impressive that in just a few pixels of observations, and focusing on a few of the lines, we can actually figure out that you have an entire ocean of water being evaporated every month,” said Peeters, co-lead investigator of PDRs4All and faculty member at Western’s Institute for Earth and Space Exploration.