Herschel Finds Oceans of Water in Disk of Nearby Star

Title: Herschel Finds Oceans of Water in Disk of Nearby Star
Author: Whitney Clavin
Source: Web- http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/herschel/news/herschel20111020.html-  
Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

Trent Perrotto 202-358-0321

NASA Headquarters, Washington

Trent.j.perrotto@jpl.nasa.gov

2011-327

Scientists found warm water vapor around the disk of a young star. This was a very important discovery because it is evidence that there is water in liquid form in cooler areas of space. "Our observations of this cold vapor indicate enough water exists in the disk to fill thousands of Earth oceans," stated astronomer Michiel Hogerheijde. This could be very important to us because if we ever have to leave earth due to global warming, this planet can be a welcoming site for us because water has very vital things to the human body.  The only problem however, is getting there. With the star being 175 light years away from earth it will take us a long time to get there.

This article connects to our unit because we are studying physical/chemical changes and the water vapor here has been through some chemical change for it to be vapor. This is very welcoming news to the society because we have finally discovered what we had been longing for, plausible life out of the solar system. I chose this article because it seemed fairly interesting and important and I thought that I could learn a lot from it. This article came from the most reliable source I can think of because it is NASA and NASA is basically the worlds leading space group. I think this article was very important because it proved humans we still have a lot more to learn about the universe and we still have to observe more things, not even the earth has been fully studied!