Space and astronomy news
There’s a population of planets that drifts through space untethered to any stars. They’re called rogue planets or free-floating planets (FFPs.) Some FFPs form as loners, never having enjoyed the company of a star. But most are ejected from solar systems somehow, and there are different ways that can happen.
One researcher set out to try to understand the FFP population and how they came to be.
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We can’t understand what we can’t clearly see. That fact plagues scientists who study how planets form. Planet formation happens inside a thick, obscuring disk of gas and dust. But when it comes to seeing through that dust to where nascent planets begin to take shape, astronomers have a powerful new tool: the James Webb Space Telescope.
Continue reading “Webb Joins the Hunt for Protoplanets”
Every time a star forms, it represents an explosion of possibilities. Not for the star itself; its fate is governed by its mass. The possibilities it signifies are in the planets that form around it. Will some be rocky? Will they be in the habitable zone? Will there be life on any of the planets one day?
There’s a point in every solar system’s development when it can no longer form planets. No more planets can form because there’s no more gas and dust available, and the expanding planetary possibilities are truncated. But the total mass of a solar system’s planets never adds up to the total mass of gas and dust available around the young star.
What happens to the mass, and why can’t more planets form?
Continue reading “In a Distant Solar System, the JWST Sees the End of Planet Formation”
Astronomers using the Very Large Telescope in Chile have now completed one of the largest surveys ever to hunt for planet-forming discs. They were able to find dozens of dusty regions around young stars, directly imaging the swirling gas and dust which hints at the locations of these new worlds.
Just like the wide variety in the types of exoplanets that have been discovered, these new data and stunning images show how protoplanetary systems are surprisingly diverse, with different sizes and shapes of disks.
In research presented in three new papers, researchers imaged 86 young stars and found 62 of them had a wide range of star-forming regions surrounding them. The astronomers say this study provides a wealth of data and unique insights into how planets arise in different regions of our galaxy.
Continue reading “Astronomers Image 62 Newly-Forming Planetary Systems”
Stars shape their solar systems. It’s true of ours, and it’s true of others. But for some massive stars, their power to shape still-forming systems is fateful and final.
Continue reading “Massive Stars Have the Power to Shape Solar Systems”
Astronomers have detected a large amount of water vapour in the protoplanetary disk around a young star. There’s at least three times as much water among the dust as there is in all of Earth’s oceans combined. And it’s not spread throughout the disk; it’s concentrated in the inner disk region.
Continue reading “This Planet-Forming Disk has More Water Than Earth’s Oceans”
Our gleaming Earth, brimming with liquid water and swarming with life, began as all rocky planets do: dust. Somehow, mere dust can become a life-bearing planet given enough time and the right circumstances. But there are unanswered questions about how dust forms any rocky planet, let alone one that supports life.
Continue reading “How We Get Planets from Clumping Dust”
Planet-forming disks are places of chaotic activity. Not only do planetesimals slam together to form larger worlds, but it now appears that the process involves the destructive recycling of water within a disk. That’s the conclusion from scientists studying JWST data from a planetary birth crèche called d203-506 in the Orion Nebula.
Continue reading “A Planetary Disk in the Orion Nebula is Destroying and Replenishing Oceans of Water Every Month”
Planets orbit stars. That’s axiomatic. Or at least it was until astronomers started finding rogue planets, also called free-floating planets (FFPs). Some of these planets were torn from their stars’ gravitational grip and now drift through the cosmos, untethered to any star. Others formed in isolation.
Now, astronomers have discovered that some FFPs can orbit each other in binary relationships as if swapping their star for another rogue planet.
Continue reading “Radio Telescope Confirms Free-Floating Binary Planets in the Orion Nebula”
One of contemporary astronomy’s most pressing questions concerns planet formation. We can see more deeply than ever into very young solar systems where planets are taking shape in the disks around young stars. But our view is still clouded by all the gas and dust in these young systems.
The picture of planet formation just got cloudier with the discovery that some young planets are shaped like flattened candies rather than spheres.
Continue reading “Some Young Planets Are Flattened Smarties, not Spheres.”