{"id":222591,"date":"2025-09-27T11:07:56","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T16:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/icy-planetesimal-with-high-nitrogen-and-water-content-discovered-in-white-dwarfs-atmosphere"},"modified":"2025-09-27T11:07:56","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T16:07:56","slug":"icy-planetesimal-with-high-nitrogen-and-water-content-discovered-in-white-dwarfs-atmosphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/icy-planetesimal-with-high-nitrogen-and-water-content-discovered-in-white-dwarfs-atmosphere","title":{"rendered":"Icy planetesimal with high nitrogen and water content discovered in white dwarf\u2019s atmosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/icy-planetesimal-with-high-nitrogen-and-water-content-discovered-in-white-dwarfs-atmosphere.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>University of Warwick astronomers have uncovered the chemical fingerprint of a frozen, water-rich planetary fragment being consumed by a white dwarf star outside our solar system.<\/p>\n<p>In our solar system, it is thought that comets and icy planetesimals (small solid objects in space) were responsible for delivering water to Earth. The existence of these icy objects is a requirement for the development of life on other worlds, but it is incredibly difficult to identify them outside our solar system as icy objects are small, faint and require <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/chemical+analysis\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">chemical analysis<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In a study <a href=\"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/mnras\/article\/543\/1\/223\/8255944\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society<\/i>, astronomers from Warwick, Europe and the US have found strong evidence that icy, volatile-rich bodies\u2014capable of delivering water and the ingredients for life\u2014exist in planetary systems beyond our own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>University of Warwick astronomers have uncovered the chemical fingerprint of a frozen, water-rich planetary fragment being consumed by a white dwarf star outside our solar system. In our solar system, it is thought that comets and icy planetesimals (small solid objects in space) were responsible for delivering water to Earth. The existence of these icy [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}