Astronomers seize a solar system for the first time ever

Scientists have witnessed the earliest stages of planet formation ever observed, watching hot minerals crystallize into solid particles around 1,300 light-year-old baby stars. This discovery published in nature marks the first time researchers captured the planetary system the moment the planet began to form – providing a cosmic time machine to study the birth of our own solar system.

The breakthrough comes from researching Hops-315, a young star surrounded by rotating gas and dust, called the protoplanetary disk. Using the James Webb Space Telescope and Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers detected the transition from gas to solid crystalline minerals, a key first step in planetary formation.

Window to our past

“This is the earliest moment we first identified planet formation,” explains Melissa McClure, chief writer at Leiden University. The discovery provides unprecedented insight into how rocky planets like Earth exist.

In our solar system, similar crystalline minerals were found trapped in ancient meteorites – rocks used by scientists so far when our solar system began to form. These meteorites contain the same silicon monoxide compound, currently observed near HOPS-315, but are in a fully cured state.

Purdue University co-author Merel Van’t Hoff described their findings as “a picture of a baby solar system” and noted: “The system we see looks like what our solar system just started to form.”

The birth process reveals

The team found that mineral formation occurs in areas equivalent to the locations in which our asteroid belt orbits the sun. This positioning is not accidental, but where astronomers expect to find the foundation of rocky planets.

The process goes like this: Silicon monoxide is a gas in the extreme heat near young stars. As the temperature drops from the distance from the star, this gas begins to condense into solid crystals. These tiny particles then stick together and gradually grow larger until a kilometer-sized “planet” (eventually becoming the seeds of the planet).

The main findings of the study include:

• Silicon monoxide detects hops-315 in both gaseous and crystalline forms
• Mineral formation occurs at a distance from our asteroid belt
• Evidence of a transition from gas to solid in real time
• Temperature and chemical conditions match early solar system models

Technological miracle

“This process has never been seen anywhere outside the prime disk or solar system,” stressed the University of Michigan co-author Edwin Bergin. “The detection requires the combination of two of the most powerful tools in astronomy.

The James Webb Space Telescope first identified the chemical characteristics of these crystalline minerals. Alma then locates its exact position in the primitive sphere disc, revealing that they form in a narrow ring around the star.

Observations show that carbon monoxide flows out of the stars in the butterfly-shaped wind, while silicon carbon monoxide jets beam outwards in a narrow stream. But most importantly, they reveal a disk of silicon monoxide monoxide disks that actively condense into solid particles.

Cosmic Archaeology

This discovery transforms HOPS-315 into a natural laboratory for studying planetary formation. “We really are the same minerals we see in this external system as we see in asteroids in the solar system,” said Logan Francis, a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University.

The results of the study show that planet formation follows a common pattern throughout the Milky Way. The physical process of creating Earth and other rocky planets in our solar system is actively taking place around distant stars, thus providing astronomers with examples of life for planet birth.

Elizabeth Humphreys, an ESO astronomer who was not involved in the study, described the study as revealing “the early stages of planetary formation” that “highlights the combined strength of JWST and ALMA in exploring protoplanetary discs.”

This discovery opens up new possibilities for ways to understand ordinary spherical planets throughout the universe, while providing direct observational evidence of the process shaping our cosmic community 4.6 billion years ago.

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