The James Webb telescope pairs with an ice cloud to learn about the formation of exoplanets. Exoplanet formation begins with a star surrounded by a disk of dust and gas.
As the star burns and creates stellar winds, the dust in the disk begins to interact and form clumps.
These clumps absorb more dust and turn into pebbles and then rocks, and the gas helps these rocks stick together as they grow and absorb more material, clearing their orbit around the star.
According to Digitallands, this is the first stage in the evolution of planets, which are called minor planets.
However, there is another important component of the growth of the planet: ice. In cold clouds of dust and gas, ice forms like sleet on grains of dust.
These ice grains contain some of the key ingredients for a potentially habitable planet, such as carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Here on Earth, some of this material is thought to have been brought to our planet by icy comets, but in other systems these ices may have been present during the formation of the exoplanets.
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers peered into the cold, dark depths of a molecular cloud to search for these ices that could form the basis of future exoplanets.
By looking at a cloud of dust and gas called the first chameleon, they were able to detect ice made of water, as well as other molecules such as ammonia and methane.
