Water-soaked planet-forming region near star seen

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists looking at a fledgling solar system have observed for the first time how water, considered a necessary ingredient for life, begins to make its way to newly forming planets.

They peered at an embryonic star called IRAS 4B located in our Milky Way galaxy about 1,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Perseus. A light year is about 6 trillion miles , the distance light travels in a year.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope enabled them to find quantities of water vapor equal to five times the volume of all the oceans on Earth that had rained down onto a dusty disk around the star where planets are believed to form.

"We're witnessing the arrival of some future solar system's supply of water," astronomer Dan Watson of the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, who led the research published in the journal Nature, said in a phone interview.

"We think that what we're seeing in this object now is quite a lot like what our solar system was like at the same age," Watson added.

Scientists eager to learn whether life exists beyond Earth believe water is one of the key ingredients needed for any life forms.

Water is abundant on Earth and other parts of our solar system, as well as elsewhere in the cosmos, for example, as ice or gas around various stars.

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