Astronomers Spot A Baby Gas Giant In The Process Of Forming

Read Time:2 Minute, 6 Second

Have you ever wondered how gas giant planets like Jupiter or Saturn were formed? In a study published in nature, astronomers took detailed warnings on the formation of gas giants in the 505-year light system of light from our own. This star system contains what researchers suggested it might be evidence of the earliest stage of the gas giant born for the first time.

In the middle of this system it is the Aurigae star, (also called Ab Aur). This star is a young child who is relatively around 2 million years old, making it roughly equal to the same age as the sun when the planets are first formed in our solar system. One of the planets in this star system is Aurigae B, (also called AB Aur B), a large gas giant surprisingly with a mass of about nine times from Jupiter. The size is not the only thing that is unusual about the planet, because Ab Aur B looks very far from the star. Orbiting at 8.6 billion miles away from Aur Aur, the planet was found about twice the distance of Pluto at this time orbiting our own sun.

The international team uses tools including Subaru telescope and Hubble Space Telescope to observe the system and check the gas disk around the star. Simultaneously, reading provides evidence on a really large planetary body in the growth period.

Competing theories about how planets form

The general consensus among modern astronomers is that the gas giant is likely to be created in a gas disk and protoplanet dust that appears around a new star formed. They are not very sure of the process like what to do so that the formation occurs.

The most common view is held, called the core increase, is that the process starts when small pieces of material colliding and trapped together, with this body gravity attracts more material from time to time. Finally, there are enough materials put together by gravity for the planet. Another theory, called disk instability, is that there is a large disk of material that cools and is separated into pieces like the planet, which then develops into a planet.

The discovery of AB Aur B is important because it is very far from the star so it cannot be formed by the core increase. This is more likely to be a fragment of the disk, which is formed by “malignant and fast gravitational processing process” which was explained by astronomers in this new research.