For the first time, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has seen a young star forge crystals in blazing heat and hurl them to the icy outskirts of its planet-forming disk, which could help explain the evolution of comets at the edge of our solar system.
The protostar, called EC 53, lies about 1,300 light-years from Earth and is surrounded by a disk of gas and dust where planets and other bodies are taking shape. Using the Mid-Infrared Instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers mapped where crystalline silicates form and how they travel outward.
Webb pinpointed the inner disk — roughly where Earth and the inner planets would have formed in our solar system — as the birthplace of these crystals. Powerful winds from the star’s disk act like a cosmic conveyor belt, propelling the crystals into the frigid outer disk, where comets may eventually form, according to a statement from NASA.
“EC 53’s layered outflows may lift up these newly formed crystalline silicates and transfer them outward, like they’re on a cosmic highway,” Jeong‑Eun Lee, lead author of a new study reporting the results, said in the statement. “Webb not only showed us exactly which types of silicates are in the dust near the star, but also where they are both before and during a burst.”
EC 53 experiences bursts roughly every 18 months, rapidly accreting material and sending some back into space as jets and winds. It’s during these energetic 100-day-long episodes that the star forges silicate crystals — minerals that should only form in hot environments — and catapults them outward, seeding the outer disk with the ingredients that icy comets carry today.
Astronomers have long detected crystalline silicates in comets and other stars’ disks, but the connection between their fiery origins and cold resting places was unclear — until now. Webb’s detailed spectra and spatial mapping provide the first direct evidence linking formation and transport.
“We’ve effectively shown how the star creates and distributes these superfine particles, which are each significantly smaller than a grain of sand,” Joel Green, co-author of the study, said in the statement.
The study highlights just how dynamic young planetary systems are and how stars actively reshape their surroundings. Observing protoplanetary disks like EC 53 can offer new insights on the building blocks of planets and comets scattered across space.
Their findings were published Jan. 21 in the journal Nature.
