These ‘interstellar glaciers’ could give water to young star systems. Could they support alien life, too?
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The chemical signatures of water ice (bright blue) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (orange) in Cygnus X, one of the most active and turbulent star birth regions in our Milky Way galaxy. | Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPAC/Hora et al.
A striking new image from NASA’s newest space telescope reveals vast reservoirs of water ice stretching across one of the Milky Way’s most chaotic stellar nurseries, offering a glimpse of where much of the universe’s water – including that found in Earth’s oceans – may come from and be stored.
The observations, captured by SPHERExmap icy materials through turbulent Cygnus X regiona massive star-forming complex filled with dense clouds of gas and dust where new stars are rapidly emerging. The snapshot, based on data collected in 2025 and released this week, highlights the water ice in bright blue alongside intertwined bands of dark dust that crisscross the region, dotted with points of light from hatchlings. stars.
The results show that these ice reservoirs are composed of molecules such as water, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, marking key ingredients in the chemistry that can ultimately lead to life as we know it. Scientists believe that these ices, frozen on the surface of tiny dust grains, represent a major source of water in the universe. Additionally, the same processes that form and preserve reservoirs are thought to give rise to planetary systems. This means that the water in EarthOceans and ices found on comets and other planetary bodies likely originate from these regions.
“These vast frozen complexes are like ‘interstellar glaciers’ that could provide a massive supply of water to new solar systems emerging in the region,” Phil Korngut, a researcher on the SPHEREx instrument and at the California Institute of Technology, said in a statement. statement.
“It’s a profound idea that we’re looking at a map of materials that could rain down on nascent planets and potentially harbor future life.”
The researchers say they expected SPHEREx to find these ices only in front of individual bright stars, where starlight acts as a searchlight revealing any intervening material.
“But this is something different,” said the study’s lead author, Joseph Hora, an astronomer at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Massachusetts, in the same statement.
To the surprise of the mission team, SPHEREx captured diffuse background light passing through “entire dust clouds” along the galactic plane, where most of the galaxy’s stars, gas and dust are concentrated.
“SPHEREx can see the spatial distribution of the ice they contain in incredible detail,” Hora said.
The same region as the header image, but in three different wavelengths, the colors are green, blue and red. This SPHEREx observation highlights the dark, dusty bands that protect water molecules from the intense radiation generated by newborn stars. | Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPAC/Hora et al.
The study supports a long-held idea that interstellar ice forms on the surface of tiny dust grains “no larger than particles found in candle smoke,” the NASA statement said.
The results also show that water ice is not evenly distributed but concentrates in the densest regions of cosmic dust, which act as protective shields and block harsh ultraviolet rays from nearby newborn stars and allow these fragile molecules to survive through the eons.
As SPHEREx continues its planned two-year sky surveyResearchers say they are excited about building an increasingly detailed map of how water and other molecules, like carbon dioxide, are distributed around the world. Milky Wayand how they react to different levels of ultraviolet radiation.
“This is only the beginning of the mission,” the NASA statement said.
A study on these results was published April 15 in The Astrophysical Journal.
