European astronomers for the first time observed the start of a new solar system. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo
A group of international researchers said Wednesday they witnessed some of the earliest stages of a planet beyond the Earth’s sun beginning to form.
The researchers from the United States, Canada and Europe saw the hot space minerals just as they began to solidify, marking the earliest stage in the planet-forming process that researchers have witnessed.
“For the first time, we have identified the earliest moment when planet formation is initiated around a star other than our sun,” professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands, Melissa McClure said.
The process was witnessed around the baby star HOPS-315, an analog for the budding sun, that is 1,300 light years away from Earth.
Researchers had previously witnessed young discs of gas and dust called “protoplanetary discs” that were the birthplace for newly formed Jupiter-like planets but the latest showed an earlier stage that scientists had never observed before.
“We’ve always known that the first solid parts of planets, or ‘planetesimals,’ must form further back in time, at earlier stages,” McClure said.
Researchers first identified the minerals using the James Webb Telescope and then observed the system with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA, to determine where the signals were coming from.
The findings showed that silicon monoxide, or SiO, which has the potential to condense in the high temperatures found in young planetary discs, can be found when baby stars are in their gaseous state, meaning it was just beginning to solidify.
“This process has never been seen before in a protoplanetary disc or anywhere outside our Solar System,” Professor at the University of Michigan, Edwin Bergin said.
Andrew Sookdeo contributed to this report.
