Astronomers See Evidence for Youngest Planet

[Raptomex]

Astronomers have found evidence for what could be the youngest planet ever detected, a world no more than a million years old circling a distant star.

The finding was part of a trio of discoveries from the Spitzer Space Telescope announced at a NASA press conference today.

The orbiting observatory also spotted the raw materials for life -- water and other prebiotic chemistry -- in planetary construction zones around five young, Sun-like stars in the constellation Taurus, 420 light-years from Earth.

"We've seen the building blocks of habitable planets for the first time unambiguously" in stars that will turn out like our Sun, said Dan Watson, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester in New York.

And Spitzer uncovered a stellar nursery where at least two developing stars, called protostars, contain the gas and dust needed to form planets. The study suggests up to 300 of the stars in the cluster may be similarly equipped.

The three discoveries are seen as related, all pointing to the possibility that planet formation is common and that even Earth-like planets, which might support life, may not be rare.

Behind the veil

Spitzer records infrared light, which allows it to peer through the planet-forming envelopes of dust that surround newborn stars. Our own solar system, now 4.6 billion years old, was once shrouded in a similar cocoon, astronomers believe.

"By seeing what's behind the dust, Spitzer has shown us star and planet formation is a very active process in our galaxy," said Ed Churchwell, an astronomy professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

The candidate for youngest known planet is not visible and so must be confirmed by future observations, but the infrared view showed there's a clear hole in a disk of dust circling a young star named CoKu Tau 4. Theorists say such a hole -- this one is 10 times the size of Earth's orbit around the Sun -- would most likely be created by a newborn planet that acted as a cosmic broom. Similar holes have signaled planets around other stars, but none so young.

The star's age is fairly easy to determine, and it's set at 1 million years. The planet would have had to form within a million years, too.

"That probably makes it the youngest planet we've ever seen," Watson said.

It also puts yet another thorn in the side of the standard model for planet formation, which says ice and dust stick together and collide with ever-larger rocks until a giant core is formed, then gas can be drawn into the mix. That process takes some 4 million years, however, said Alan Boss, a theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington who was not involved in the observations.

Archived topic from Anythingforums, old topic ID:434, old post ID:3732

[MrSelf]

That's very interesting. It seems lately we have been on the path that maybe planets capable of sustaining life as we know it are more common. One thing's for sure, we are going to have to figure out some way to break the rules and travel faster than light or find a way around it, 420 light years away is short in relation to the universe, but so far from our capability.

Archived topic from Anythingforums, old topic ID:434, old post ID:3754

[MagicBrowser]

Amazing

Archived topic from Anythingforums, old topic ID:434, old post ID:3803

[Red Squirrel]

What I wonder is, how do they actually now how far things are? Since a light year is an incredible thing, it means it takes a year for light to go there so that is very far and also what they see, is how it was that many years ago, which is perhaps where time travel comes in, as looking at space is actually looking at the past.

I'm really wondering how non Earth life form would be like, I doubt there is any but it seems we are coming closer to a possibility, so perhaps there is, and if there's not, perhaps it's possible to put some. People could move to other planets that can support life, and plant trees etc... to make an ecosysem. I see it this will be possible in the future. But first we need to actually figure out a way of getting there.

Archived topic from Anythingforums, old topic ID:434, old post ID:3805