ALMA Traces History of Water in Planet Formation Back to the Interstellar Medium

Observations of water in the disk forming around protostar V883 Ori has unlocked clues about the formation of comets and planetesimals in our own Solar System

Scientists studying a nearby protostar have detected the presence of water in its circumstellar disk. The new observations made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) mark the first detection of water being inherited into a protoplanetary disk without significant changes to its composition. These results further suggest that the water in our Solar System formed billions of years before the Sun. The new observations are published today in Nature.