New Star Squirts Water From Poles

[Dotini]

A study, accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, says ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory has spotted a young sun-like star 750 light-years from Earth that is shooting water from its poles at about 124,000 miles per hour.

I wonder, do all protostars do this? Is oxygen always part of star formation? Are Neptune and Uranus water planets?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/06/110613-space-science-star-water-bullets-kristensen/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/17/star-shooting-water-jets-herschel_n_879211.html

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-06/herschel-spots-young-star-spewing-water-jets-interstellar-space?cmpid=tw

Respectfully submitted,
Steve

[Drakkith]

I'd say it depends on the makeup of the nebula that exists before it collapses into a star. If it has enough oxygen, sure. If not, then no.

[Antiphon]

I'm not an astrophysicist but this just seems outrageous. By what mechanism could liquid water ever exist in such proximity to any star let alone be ejected from it?

[Nik_2213]

If it is stripping water-ice from proto-planetary nebula then ejecting that as protons and hydroxyl ions, no surprise there. If they cool and recombine, there'd be a haze of molecular-scale ice crystals again...

[Drakkith]

I'm not an astrophysicist but this just seems outrageous. By what mechanism could liquid water ever exist in such proximity to any star let alone be ejected from it?

Did you read the article? The oxygen and hydrogen were pulled in, heated and then forced out of the poles where they recombined once they cooled off. The "water" isn't really being ejected, but the atoms that form water are. It all depends on how you look at it I guess.

[Dotini]

There is apparently no self-consistent theory that can explain what we are seeing.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-baby-star-blasts-jets-space.html

Lars E. Kristensen, a postdoctoral student at the Leiden University in the Netherlands, an author of the paper, said that all stars are formed by the accretion of dust and other particles in interstellar space and are eventually surrounded by a disk of material that falls into the star as it builds.

The disks are something like the rings of Saturn but far less well-defined, he said, "more puffy."

Material that is not used by the forming star is blasted back out into space from the poles, perpendicular to the angle of the disks.

"We don’'t know the launching point or the exact launching mechanism," Kristensen said. "There is no self-consistent theory that can explain what we are seeing."

Respectfully,
Steve