Scientists Witnessed the Formation of a Planet in Action For The First Time

You know what they say about everything having a beginning and an end. Therefore, even a solid and huge amount of matter like the Earth also has a beginning. It most likely has an end, too, but let’s hope it’s as far away as possible.

A new discovery by astronomers reveal, for the first time, the formation of a planet in sheer action. They have been using the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) to capture 3D motions of gas in a planet-forming disk. The gas is flowing like a waterfall into huge cavities that are actually planets in formation.

Lead author Richard Teague from the University of Michigan and his team used new high-resolution ALMA data from the Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP) to study the gas’s velocity in more detail. Teague stated:

With the high fidelity data from this program, we were able to measure the gas’s velocity in three directions instead of just one,

For the first time, we measured the motion of the gas rotating around the star, towards or away from the star, and up- or downwards in the disk.

The three predicted planets from the study are located 87, 140, and 237 AU away from us. The star they are orbiting is HD 163296. For those who don’t know, an AU means Astronomical Unit, and it measures as much as the distance from Earth to the Sun.

Scientists didn’t expect this

Lead author Teague explained to us:

The disk around HD 163296 is the brightest and biggest disk we can see with ALMA,

But it was a big surprise to actually see these gas flows so clearly. The disks appears to be much more dynamic than we thought.

Co-author Ted Bergin of the University of Michigan pointed out the importance of the discovery:

This gives us a much more complete picture of planet formation than we ever dreamed,

By characterizing these flows we can determine how planets like Jupiter are born and characterize their chemical composition at birth. We might be able to use this to trace the birth location of these planets, as they can move during formation.

The research has been published in the journal Nature.

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