Scientists chasing exoplanets have developed a new smart strategy to find hidden migratory worlds



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Researchers will use data from the ALMA telescope to study migration patterns of exoplanets in distant star systems.

A telescope capable of capturing dust rings from distant star systems can prove very useful because scientists have come up with a new strategy to help them find hidden migratory worlds and place of birth of exoplanets. , scientists think they can now learn more about exoplanets.

As Science live According to this report, British scientists have discovered how new planets should move inside these rings and how to monitor the movement of these exoplanets, even if they are not visible. As principal author Farzana Meru of the University of Warwick explains: "The planets are really very difficult to detect directly, but the planets open an empty space in the disk."

In what has been compared to a mole leaving a subtle but visible path where it moves, exoplanets also create paths that can be seen passing through protoplanetary disks that can be tracked by astronomers, whether they can or not observe the exoplanets themselves. This capability is completely new and is only possible with the Atacama Large Millimeter / Submilleter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile, and will help astronomers detect these distant planets.

But as the tracks left by the exoplanets do not linger very long, scientists would not normally be able to fully understand the entire migration of the exoplanet. And, although scientists know that planets can have orbits that change significantly, so far this has never been observed directly.

However, the new strategy developed by Meru and his team could change this in a major way, because scientists will be able to analyze the size of the dust in the rings of exoplanets. Meru notes it by observing the wavelengths of scientists in electromagnetic radiation. will be able to determine the size of the dust.

"The short wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation correspond to small dust sizes, and the longer wavelengths correspond to larger dust sizes."

Scientists studying ALMA data will now be able to directly observe the dust in these rings to determine if it is thick or thin compared to other rings. The Meru team has already created a simulation that analyzes the evolution of dust particles during the migration of exoplanets. It has been found that as they move towards their star, the dust particles close to it accelerate a great deal, pushing them directly into an extended orbit.

However, large dust particles are much easier to move than smaller dust particles that slow down because of the ambient gas that trails them a bit. But by studying dust particles over long periods of time, Meru thinks scientists will be able to observe two completely separate rings of dust around exoplanets that migrate inward.

The findings of Meru's and his team's research on hunting exoplanet migration routes can be read on the preprint server. arXiv.

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