Chicago, Oct.4, 2007: Snuggled into a huge belt of warm dust, an earth-like planet appears to be forming some 424 light years away, scientists said.
At somewhere between 10 and 16 million years old, the planet’s solar system is still in its “very young adolescence,” but is at the perfect age for forming earth-like planets, said lead researcher Carey Lisse of Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Department.
The massive dust ring surrounding one of system’s two stars is smack in the middle of the system’s ‘habitable zone’ where water could one day exist on a rocky planet.
These type of dust belts rare form around sun-like stars and the presence of an outer ice belt makes it all the more likely that water, and subsequently life, could one day reach the planet’s surface.
And this belt is made up of rocky compounds similar to those which form our Earth’s crust and metal sulfides similar to the material found in the Earth’s core.
“It is just right stuff to be making an Earth,” Lisse said in a telephone interview. “It is exciting to think that this is happening.” Not that Lisse will be around to see much of it.
The images captured by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope are about 424 years old, but that is barely a blink in the eye of the young planet.
It will likely be about 100 million years before the planet is fully formed and – if our planet is anything to go by – about a billion years before the first signs of life such as algae appear, Lisse said.
The evolution of complex organisms such as dinosaurs will probably take another couple of billion years if the new planet follows a pattern similar to ours, he added.
But the images captured have helped Lisse and colleagues understand a lot about how an Earth-like planet could form.
While mathematical models can be created to extrapolate what will happen to this particular system, even more can be learned if astronomers continue to probe the universe for other Earth-like planets at various stages of development.
Right now, the planet in the system known as HD113766 is growing as dust grains clump together to form rocks and these rocks collide to form larger bodies, some as big as our own moon. AFP
At somewhere between 10 and 16 million years old, the planet’s solar system is still in its “very young adolescence,” but is at the perfect age for forming earth-like planets, said lead researcher Carey Lisse of Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Department.
The massive dust ring surrounding one of system’s two stars is smack in the middle of the system’s ‘habitable zone’ where water could one day exist on a rocky planet.
These type of dust belts rare form around sun-like stars and the presence of an outer ice belt makes it all the more likely that water, and subsequently life, could one day reach the planet’s surface.
And this belt is made up of rocky compounds similar to those which form our Earth’s crust and metal sulfides similar to the material found in the Earth’s core.
“It is just right stuff to be making an Earth,” Lisse said in a telephone interview. “It is exciting to think that this is happening.” Not that Lisse will be around to see much of it.
The images captured by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope are about 424 years old, but that is barely a blink in the eye of the young planet.
It will likely be about 100 million years before the planet is fully formed and – if our planet is anything to go by – about a billion years before the first signs of life such as algae appear, Lisse said.
The evolution of complex organisms such as dinosaurs will probably take another couple of billion years if the new planet follows a pattern similar to ours, he added.
But the images captured have helped Lisse and colleagues understand a lot about how an Earth-like planet could form.
While mathematical models can be created to extrapolate what will happen to this particular system, even more can be learned if astronomers continue to probe the universe for other Earth-like planets at various stages of development.
Right now, the planet in the system known as HD113766 is growing as dust grains clump together to form rocks and these rocks collide to form larger bodies, some as big as our own moon. AFP
Courtesy: The New Indian Express, Madurai, Oct.5, 2007.
Grateful thanks to AFP and The New Indian Express.
1 comment:
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