S P O T L I G H T

Water outside solar system: NASA
Washington, July 13
Distant planetary systems, where comets and asteroids swirl around blazing stars, may contain water, an essential ingredient of life, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said. But some scientists believe a NASA space probe that delivered the news may also have caught a glimpse of a cataclysmic demise awaiting Earth and other planets of the solar system billions of years from now. Evidence of water vapours were reported by the Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite, a small radio observatory launched by NASA in late 1998, as it focused on a giant star designated by astronomers as IRC+10216 located 500 light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Leo. AFP