NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected enough water vapour to fill the oceans on Earth five times inside the collapsing nest of a forming star system. Astronomers say the water vapour is pouring down from the system's natal cloud and smacking into a dusty disk where planets are thought to form.
The observations provide the first direct look at how water, an essential ingredient for life as we know it, begins to make its way into planets, possibly even rocky ones like our own.