Apr 9 1998
From The Space Library
U.S. astronomers studying star formation reported that a body resembling a pinkish star, at the center of the sword in the constellation Orion, was "a hotbed of star formation called the Orion Nebula," the site of a gas cloud generating enough water "to fill the Earth's oceans 60 times a day." The team of astronomers, led by Martin O. Harwit of Cornell University, used the Infrared Space Observatory to observe the Orion Nebula, detecting "large amounts of water vapor within clouds of gas on their way to becoming stars in the nebula." The discovery, which demonstrated for the first time "the vital role that water plays in star formation," may "provide an important clue about the source of water in the solar system." Michael Werner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) emphasized the significance of the discovery, saying that the data confirmed, "that water is prevalent in space" and "plays a vital role in the chemistry and physics of interstellar clouds.
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