These 'interstellar glaciers' could give water to young star systems. Could they support alien life, too?

A striking new image from NASA's newest space telescope reveals vast reservoirs of water ice stretching across one of the Milky Way's most chaotic stellar nurseries, offering a glimpse into where much of the universe's water — including that found in Earth's oceans — may originate and be stored. The observations, captured by SPHEREx , map icy material across the turbulent Cygnus X region , a massive star-forming complex filled with dense clouds of gas and dust where new stars are rapidly …