A Study Reveals How Old Water on Earth
- Pexels/Lisa Fotios
Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen called heavy hydrogen (HDO). It has one proton and one neutron in its nucleus, separating it from ordinary hydrogen, called protium.
Protium has protons but no neutrons. Both of these hydrogen isotopes are stable and persist to this day. Both can combine with oxygen to form water.
Moreover, when the ice water forms a coat on the dust grains, the authors call this the cold phase, the first step in the process they describe in their article. Gravity begins to exert itself on the cloud as matter clumps in its center.
More mass falls into the center of the molecular cloud and begins to form protostars. Some of the gravity is converted into heat, and within a few astronomical units (AU) of the cloud's center, the gas and dust in the disk reach 100 Kelvin (-280 Fahrenheit).
As information, 100 Kelvin is very cold in Earth terms. But chemically, it's enough to trigger sublimation and ice phase change into water vapor. Sublimation occurs in the hot corino region, the warm envelope surrounding the cloud center. Although they also contain complex organic molecules, water is the most abundant molecule in corinos.