Webb confirms water ice on a main-belt comet

May 15. (EUROPE PRESS) –

Observations with the Webb Space Telescope have confirmed for the first time the existence of gas _specifically, water vapor_ around a comet in the main asteroid belt, indicating that water ice from the primordial solar system may be preserved in that region.

However, with the successful detection of water by the space telescope’s Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument comes a new puzzle: Unlike other comets, Comet 238P/Read had no detectable carbon dioxide, warn scientists at new studio, published in Nature.

“Our water-soaked world, teeming with life and, as far as we know, unique in the universe, is somewhat of a mystery: We’re not sure where all this water came from,” said Stefanie Milam, Webb Telescope Associate Project Scientist for Planetary Science. and co-author of the study. “Understanding the history of water distribution in the solar system will help us understand other planetary systems and whether they might be on their way to hosting an Earth-like planet,” he added. it’s a statement.

Comet Read is a main-belt comet, an object that resides in the main asteroid belt but periodically displays a halo, or coma, and a comet-like tail. The main belt comets themselves are a fairly new classification, and Comet Read was one of the original three comets used to establish this category. Before then, comets were understood to reside in the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud, beyond Neptune’s orbit, where their ices might be preserved farther from the Sun. Frozen material vaporizing as It is the fact that comets are approaching the Sun that gives these objects their characteristic coma and floating tail, differentiating them from asteroids. Scientists have long speculated that water ice might be preserved in the warmer asteroid belt, within the orbit of Jupiter, but getting definitive proof was difficult, until the arrival of the Webb telescope.

“In the past, we’ve seen main belt objects that have all the characteristics of comets, but only with these precise spectral data from Webb can we say yes, it’s definitely water ice that creates that effect“, explained astronomer Michael Kelley of the University of Maryland, lead author of the study.

“With the observations of Read’s comet obtained with the Webb telescope, We can now show that water ice from the early solar system may be preserved in the asteroid belt.”Kelley said.

The absence of carbon dioxide was a bigger surprise. Typically, carbon dioxide makes up about 10 percent of a comet’s volatile material that can easily be vaporized in the Sun’s heat. The science team offers two possible explanations for the lack of carbon dioxide. One possibility is that Comet Read had carbon dioxide when it formed, but has lost it due to warm temperatures.

“Being in the asteroid belt for a long time could cause this: carbon dioxide vaporizes more easily than water ice and would have seeped in for billions of years,” Kelley said. Another option, she said, is that Comet Read would have formed in a particularly hot pocket of the solar system, where carbon dioxide was not available.

The next step is to take the investigation beyond Comet Read to see how it compares to other comets in the main belt. says astronomer Heidi Hammel of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), head of Webb’s Guaranteed Time Observations program for solar system objects and co-author of the study. “These asteroid belt objects are small and faint, and with Webb we can finally see what’s happening to them and draw some conclusions. Are other main belt comets also devoid of carbon dioxide? Either way, it will be exciting to find out.” Hammel said.

Co-author Milam envisions the possibilities of bringing research even closer to our planet. “Now that Webb has confirmed that there is preserved water as close as the asteroid belt, It would be exciting to follow up on this discovery with a sample-collection mission and learn what else main-belt comets can tell us.”