A snow line in space - The País.com (Spain)

ALMA Telescope, deployed in Atacama (Chile), has captured the first image of a snow line space in a nascent solar system, according to an article published in the journal Science .

On Earth, the snow is typically formed at high elevations where temperatures drop transforms atmospheric moisture in snow. Similarly, in a solar system snow line appears where temperatures reach freezing and collect water and other chemical compounds which, otherwise, would vapors. Astronomers believe that snow lines in space play a vital role in the formation of the planets because moisture helps frozen dust grains clump together.

With the help of powerful ALMA, astronomers have imaged radial wave length of a line of carbon monoxide snow around TW Hydrae, a young star about 175 million light years from Earth. The TW Hydrae, in the constellation of Hydra, is considered the infant solar system closest to our solar system.

“We had evidence of snow lines in our solar system, but now we can see one with our own eyes. This is very interesting,” said Edwin Bergin, professor of astronomy at the University of Michigan.

Different chemicals

freeze at different distances from a central star. In the solar system where the Earth, water freezes at a distance about five times the distance from Earth to the Sun This is the region where orbits Jupiter.

snow lines of various chemical compounds can be linked to the formation of specific types of planets.

line carbon monoxide in our system corresponds to the orbit of Neptune and could also mark the site from which would form icy bodies such as comets and dwarf planets Pluto type, according to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory .

So far

snow lines were detected only by their spectral signature. Never direct images were taken, so that their precise location and extent could not be determined.

“ALMA has given us the first real image of a line of snow around a young star, which is very exciting because it speaks about a very early period in the history of our own solar system,” explains Chunhua Charlie Qi, a researcher at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. “Now we can see the previously hidden details about the frozen outer edges of another solar system, one that has much in common with our own solar system when he was less than ten million years of existence.”

snow line, in particular, is interesting because the ice requires carbon monoxide for the formation of methanol, a building block in the full-organic molecules, which are essential for life.

Comets and asteroids

could transport these molecules to new planets forming that are similar to Earth, spreading the ingredients there for life.