Skip to main content

Clumps Around a Young Star Could Eventually Turn Into Planets Like Jupiter

From the dust, we rise. Vortices within the disks of young stars bring forth planets that coalesce into worlds. At least that’s our understanding of planetary evolution, and new images from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Very Large Telescope’s Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) further support this.

We know that most stars have planetary systems and that these systems form with their star via protoplanetary disks. But there are still plenty of smaller details we don’t fully understand. What causes the initial clumping of material from which planets grow, and how do planets clear the debris of a disk to become a fully-fledged planetary system?

Studying the early period of a star system is difficult because the same gas and dust that forms planets also obscure them from view. But in recent years advanced infrared and radio observatories have yielded high-resolution images of many young stars. We can now see large protoplanets in many of these disks and gaps where planets have cleared debris. Now observations of a young star 5,000 light-years away have given us a glimpse of the earliest moments of planetary formation.

The star is known as V960 Mon, and it attracted the attention of astronomers in 2014 after it suddenly brightened by a factor of 20. This outburst showed that the star’s protoplanetary disk had intricate spiral arms. Astronomers are still not entirely sure how these spirals form, but they seem to be connected to early planet formation. So a team of astronomers wanted to take a closer look.

Gravitational clumps forming withing the spiral arms of V960 Mon. Credit: ESO/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Weber et al

There are two broad models of planetary formation. The first model argues that planets form gradually through what is known as core accretion. Small clumps form within a debris disk, which grows over time as it captures nearby material. The second model argues that the seeds of planets form quickly through gravitational instabilities within the disk. Astronomers have found evidence of core accretion in some disks, but most of the young planets we’ve observed are already sizable, suggesting the latter model.

In this new study, the team found evidence of a nearby star that is triggering gravitational clumps within the spiral arms of V960 Mon. This suggests that planetary cores can form quickly within a spiral arm due to gravitational perturbations. It is the first strong evidence in support of the gravitational instability model.

We still do not know if one or both models play significant roles in planetary formation, but it is clear the process can be complex. It is clear that change can happen quickly, so it will be important to look for transient brightening among young stars to better understand the process. As new observatories such as the Vera Rubin Telescope come online, astronomers will be able to see how planets rise from the spiral arms of stars.

Reference: Philipp Weber et al. “Spirals and Clumps in V960 Mon: Signs of Planet Formation via Gravitational Instability around an FU Ori Star?” The Astrophysical Journal Letters 952 (2023): L17.

The post Clumps Around a Young Star Could Eventually Turn Into Planets Like Jupiter appeared first on Universe Today.



from Universe Today https://ift.tt/XpLdYGf
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Researchers Match Up 12 Meteorites with the Near-Earth Asteroids They Came From

Every day meteoroids blast through our planet’s atmosphere to hit the ground as meteorites. A team of researchers in Italy traced twelve of them to progenitor asteroids that orbit in near-Earth space. Scientists treasure meteorites because they reveal information about their parent bodies. In an arXiv paper, two Italian researchers—Albino Carbognani and Marco Fenucci—analyze the characteristics of the parent bodies of 20 selected meteorites. They were able to track all but eight back to their parent asteroids. Based on their work, the pair says at least a quarter of meteorites come from collisions that happened in near-Earth space and not in the Main Belt. Meteorites from Near-Earth Asteroids: How They Got Here Many meteorites are chondritic, similar to asteroids in the Main Belt (or came from it). In their paper, the authors point out that progenitor meteoroids (including many that fall to Earth and become meteorites) formed millions of years ago following collisions between main-...
Post a Comment
Read more

JWST Takes a Detailed Look at Jupiter’s Moon Ganymede

Nature doesn’t conform to our ideas of neatly-contained categories. Many things in nature blur the lines we try to draw around them. That’s true of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System. The JWST took a closer look at Ganymede, the moon that’s kind of like a planet, to understand its surface better. Ganymede is basically a planet, except it doesn’t orbit the Sun. If it did orbit the Sun instead of Jupiter, it would be indistinguishable from a planet. It has a differentiated internal structure with a molten core that produces a magnetic field. It has a silicon mantle much like Earth’s, and has a complex icy crust with a deep ocean submerged beneath it. It has an atmosphere, though it’s thin. It’s also larger than Mercury, and almost as large as Mars. According to the authors of a new study, it’s an archetype of a water world. But even with all this knowledge of the huge moon, there are details yet to be revealed. This is especially true of its complex surface...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Ultraviolet Habitable Zone Sets a Time Limit on the Formation of Life

The field of extrasolar planet studies has grown exponentially in the past twenty years. Thanks to missions like Kepler, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), and other dedicated observatories, astronomers have confirmed 5,690 exoplanets in 4,243 star systems . With so many planets and systems available for study, scientists have been forced to reconsider many previously-held notions about planet formation and evolution and what conditions are necessary for life. In the latter case, scientists have been rethinking the concept of the Circumsolar Habitable Zone (CHZ). By definition, a CHZ is the region around a star where an orbiting planet would be warm enough to maintain liquid water on its surface. As stars evolve with time, their radiance and heat will increase or decrease depending on their mass , altering the boundaries of the CHZ. In a recent study , a team of astronomers from the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) considered how the evolution of star...
Post a Comment
Read more