Jul 11 2001
From The Space Library
NASA announced that images provided by the Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS), which NASA had launched in December 1998, showed new evidence that extra-planetary systems contain water. In particular, astronomers had studied the giant IRC+10216 star, also known as CW Leonis, and had located water vapor surrounding the celestial body. Scientists had never considered the giant star, located some 500 light-years from Earth, as a likely host of water because of its high levels of carbon. Gary Melnick of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics led the SWAS study, which concluded that the most viable explanation for the “substantial concentrations of water vapor” around the star was that the star’s gravity had pulled the water vapor from the icy surfaces of nearby comets. The discovery had broad implications for scientists’ theories about how Earth might eventually end. “We think we are witnessing the type of apocalypse that will ultimately befall our own planetary system,” said one SWAS researcher. “Several billion years from now, the Sun will become a giant star and its power output will increase five thousand fold. As the luminosity of the Sun increases, a wave of water vaporization will spread outwards through the solar system, starting with Earth’s oceans and extending well beyond the orbit of Neptune.” (Gary J. Melnick et al., “Discovery of Water Vapour Around IRC+10216 as Evidence for Comets Orbiting Another Star,” Nature 412, no. 6843 (12 July 2001): 160163; NASA, “Stellar Apocalypse Yields First Evidence of Water-Bearing Worlds Beyond Our Solar System,” news release 01-140, 11 July 2001.)
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