Astronomers have confirmed what was long suspected – frozen water is spread throughout the universe. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has found evidence of crystalline water ice in a ‘debris disk’ orbiting a Sun-like star in a young solar system 155 light-years away.
Using Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument, researchers noticed that this debris disk is similar to our solar system’s Kuiper belt which house dwarf planets, comets, and other bits of ice and rock that often collide with one another. The findings have been published in the journal Nature.
Ice ice baby!
Webb found crystalline water ice in a debris disk around a young, Sun-like star. Scientists expected to see it in other star systems, because of its presence in our own – but haven’t had sensitive enough instruments to give definitive proof until now.… pic.twitter.com/BPkmgNqv5G
— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) May 15, 2025
Explaining the significance behind this discovery, Chen Xie, the lead author of the new paper and an assistant research scientist at Johns Hopkins University said in a statement“The presence of water ice helps facilitate planet formation. Icy materials may also ultimately be ‘delivered’ to terrestrial planets that may form over a couple hundred million years in systems like this.”
Webb has revealed that the disk surrounds the star cataloged HD 181327 which is just 23 million years old but more massive than our Sun due to which this solar system is also slightly larger. Notably, Saturn’s rings also contain billions of specks of water ice similar to this disk.
“HD 181327 is a very active system,” said Christine Chen, a co-author and an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute. “There are regular, ongoing collisions in its debris disk. When those icy bodies collide, they release tiny particles of dusty water ice that are perfectly sized for Webb to detect.”
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But the water ice quantity is not so vast in the debris disk. According to the researchers, the outer area of the disk has 20% of water ice while the middle portion has only 8%. Besides, the ice in the middle portion is getting destroyed faster than they are being produced. The specks closest to the star have no chance of survival as they are being evaporated by the ultraviolet light.
Webb is said to have opened the doors to study how these processes play out in new ways in other planetary systems, which scientists plan to study in the future.
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(Image: NASA)
