Newborn gas planets may be surprisingly flat – new research
Retrieved on:
Monday, February 12, 2024
A new planet starts its life in a rotating circle of gas and dust, a cradle known as a protostellar disc.
Key Points:
- A new planet starts its life in a rotating circle of gas and dust, a cradle known as a protostellar disc.
- My colleagues and I have used computer simulations to show that newborn gas planets in these discs are likely to have surprisingly flattened shapes.
- This finding, published in Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters, could add to our picture of exactly how planets form.
- Until now only three such young protoplanets have been observed, with two of them in the same system, PDS 70.
How planets start off
- Once a core of dust with enough massive forms, it draws gas from the disc to form a gas giant planet.
- In other words, they are too heavy to be maintained and so fragment into pieces, which evolve into planets.
- The appeal of this theory is that planet formation happens very fast, within a few thousand years, which is consistent with observations that suggest planets exist in very young discs.
- Our study focused on gas giant planets formed via the model of disc instability.
No flat Earths
- They are thought to form by slowly assembling dust particles to pebbles, rocks, kilometre-sized objects and eventually planets.
- But our study does support a role for disc instability in the case of some worlds in some planetary systems.
- The comparison between these theoretical models and observations is bringing us closer and closer to understanding the origins of our Solar System.
Dimitris Stamatellos receives funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).