The birth of the solar system: Astronomers first observe early planet formation
Astronomers have discovered the earliest rocky planets that form around a sun-like star, providing valuable peeks into the dawn of our own solar system.
It was an unprecedented snapshot of “Time Zero” when the new world began gelling, scientists reported Wednesday.
“We have a direct glimpse into the hot areas where rocky planets like Earth revolve around young protons,” said Melissa McClure of Leiden Observatory, which leads the international research team.
“This is the first time, we can conclude that the first step in planet formation is happening now.”
Fred Ciesla of the University of Chicago said the observations have a unique understanding of the internal functioning of emerging planetary systems, and he was not involved in the research in Nature.
“This is one of the things we’ve been waiting for. Astronomers have been thinking about how long-term planetary systems form,” Ciesla said. “There are a lot of opportunities here.”
NASA’s Webb Space Telescope and Chile’s Southern European Observatory (ESO) collaborated to unveil these early planet-forming blocks surrounded by young stars, namely Hops-315. This is a yellow dwarf, like the sun, but much younger, 100,000 to 200,000 years old and 1,370 light years. A single light-year is 9 trillion kilometers.
First, McClure and her team stared deeply at the gas disks around the baby stars and found solid speckled condensation – signs of early planet formation. Because of the way stars tilt toward the Earth, the gaps outside the disk allow them to stare inside.
They detected silica gas and crystalline silicate minerals, the components of solid materials that were first formed in our solar system 4.5 billion years ago. The action unfolds at a similar position to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which contains the remaining components of our solar system planets.
McClure said in an email that condensation of overheated minerals has never been found around other young stars, so “we don’t know if this is a common feature of planetary formation or a weird feature of the solar system.” “Our research suggests that this may be a common process in the earliest stages of Earth formation.”
On July 9, July 22 and August 5, the Earth will rotate a little bit, making those days a little shorter than 24 hours.
McClure said that although other studies have looked at young gas disks, more commonly mature disks with potential planets, until now, there is no clear concrete evidence of planet formation.
In stunning images taken by ESO’s Alma telescope network, the emerging planetary system resembles a lightning bug glowing over a black blank.
It is impossible to know how many planets may form around hops 315. McClure said that since the gas disk is as big as the sun, it could also be one million or more eight planets from now on.
Purdue University co-author Merel Van’t Hoff is eager to find more budding planetary systems. By projecting a wider network, astronomers can look for similarities and determine which processes are crucial to the formation of a world-like earth.
“Are there planets like Earth there or we like to be so special that we may not expect it to happen often?”
