Pristine ices in a planet-forming disk revealed by heavy water.

ABSTRACT: Water is essential to our understanding of the planet-formation process and habitability on Earth. Although trace amounts of water are seen across all phases of star and planet formation, the bulk of the water reservoir often goes undetected, hiding crucial parts of its journey from giant molecular clouds to planets. This raises the question of whether water molecules in comets and (exo-)planets is largely inherited from the interstellar medium or whether the water molecules are destroyed and then reformed in the disk. Water isotopologue ratios involving doubly deuterated water (D₂O) are a sensitive tracer to answer this question. Here we present strong evidence of inheritance through an enhancement of D₂O in the outbursting V883 Ori disk. The high D₂O/H

SUBMITTER: Leemker M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12534187 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature