Infant Exo-Planet Discovered
It was only yesterday that we reported on the dust that forms our universe around us. Well, according to a report from the Times Online, an infant planet has been discovered and it is still in a solar system being formed by that very cosmic dust.
Thought to be only ten million years old, it is the youngest planet ever to be found by humans. Putting it in context, the previous ‘youngest’ planet was estimated to be 100 million years old, and our own Earth is calculated to be 4.5 billion years old.
And though it is just an infant, it is much larger than our own
Earth. In fact, it has a mass 3,115 times that of our own planet and
9.8 times that of Jupiter. The planet orbits an infant star, called TW
Hydrae (TW Hya), which is thought to have only formed within the last
eight to ten million years. This planet would definitely have formed
shortly after the stars birth, and astronomers guess that there might
be more planets forming within the disc.
The important astronomical facts tell us that the star is only 180 million light years from Earth. The planet in question orbits the star from a distance of only 3.7 million miles (compared to Earth’s 93 million miles) and takes only 3.56 days to complete a full orbit around TW Hya.
The process of formation is still continuing according to researchers, though they believe that TW Hya is nearly complete. The distance between the star and the inside edge of the disc of clouds surrounding it sits only at 5.6 million miles. Thus, it was the absence of dust and gas – between the star and edge – that alerted astronomers to the existence of the planet, TW Hya b.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, in Germany, reported their discovery in the journal Nature.
“There is a general consensus that planets form within discs of dust and gas around newly born stars. Details of their formation process, however, are a matter of debate. The timescale of planet formation remains unclear, so the detection of planets around young stars with protoplanetary discs is potentially of great interest. Hitherto, no such planet has been found.”
Posted by Casey Kazan.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3123427.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=1515793
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