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When she saw pictures of the young planet PDS 70B, "It seemed so clear," says Miriam Keppler, who led a team in the discovery.
ESO / A. Muller et al.
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ESO / A. Muller et al.
When she saw pictures of the young planet PDS 70B, "It seemed so clear," says Miriam Keppler, who led a team in the discovery.
ESO / A. Muller et al.
An international team of scientists discovered a young planet – aged only 5 or 6 million years – forging its own path through space and probably under development.
Scientists have captured a photograph that, according to them, first direct image of the birth of a planet that is still forming around a star.
It is a major discovery for those of us on Earth, a planet aged from 4.5 to 19459025 billion. The uncovered planet may be young, but it is huge: several times the size of Jupiter, which could contain 1,300 planets inside.
The images provide useful information on the formation of planets, including those of our own solar system. A team of about 120 scientists worked on the research, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
"It's a long and cautious process" to characterize a young planet, says Andre Muller, who was working at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. "We worked for at least a year on it daily."
The name of the planet? PDS 70 b. This is based on the name of the orbit star, PDS 70.
But the research team has not yet given a nickname to the new planet –
The Published photos on Monday were taken with the Very Large Telescope – a Chile-based facility that can combine images of four of the world's most advanced telescopes.
Scientists have theorized that planets form and grow in protoplanetary disks – collections of gas and dust surrounding a young star. This photo captured this process for the first time.
"Now we have evidence that planetary objects [carve] are a hole in the disc," says Muller. "It's a very lucky case."
And the new planet revolved around the star, albeit slowly. The PDS 70B rotates into orbit once every 120 years of the Earth.
Scientists know that young planets are forming in our Milky Way, and they have already seen clues, says Miriam Keppler, who was leading a team on the project. at the Max Planck Institute. But they never documented a planet as it was formed.
"It was breathtaking," says Keppler. "It seemed so clear."
This discovery confirms the theoretical models of planet formation and will help scientists better understand the birth of planets.
And these new discoveries do not concern only very distant planets.
"It is important to understand how the planets of our own solar system were formed," says Keppler.
As Muller puts it: "It's a step forward to understand where we come from."
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