When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.The young star EC 53, part of the Serpens Nebula — a stellar nursery located about 1,300 light-years from Earth that is brimming with actively forming stars — where NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed crystals being forged near the star and carried outward by powerful winds. | Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (NASA-JPL), Joel Green (STScI); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)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.AdvertisementAdvertisementWebb 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 silicat …
