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Jupiter Like Protoplanet

  • 08 Apr 2022
  • 4 min read

Why in News?

Recently, the Hubble Space Telescope has photographed a Jupiter-like protoplanet forming through a process that researchers have described as intense and violent.

What is the Newly Forming Planet?

  • The newly forming planet captured by Hubble is called AB Aurigae b and embedded in a protoplanetary disk with distinct spiral structures swirling around and surrounding a young star that is estimated to be about 2 million years old.
    • That is also about the same age our solar system was when planet formation was underway.
    • It is 531 light-years away from our sun.
  • This protoplanet is probably around nine times the size of Jupiter and orbits its host star at a distance of 8.6 billion miles, over two times the distance between our Sun and pluto.

What is a Protoplanet?

  • Protoplanets are small celestial objects that are the size of a moon or a bit bigger. They are small planets, like an even smaller version of a dwarf planet.
    • Astronomers believe that these objects form during the creation of a solar system.
  • The most popular theory of how a solar system is formed says that a giant cloud of molecular dust collapsed, forming one or more stars.
  • Then a cloud of gas forms around the new star. As a result of gravity and other forces, the dust and other particles in this cloud collide and stick together forming larger masses.
  • While some of these objects break apart on impact, a number of them continue to grow.
  • Once they reach a certain size – around a kilometre – these objects are large enough to attract particles and other small objects with their gravity. They continue to get larger until they form protoplanets.

What is NASA’s Disk Instability Theory?

  • According to NASA, this discovery supports a long-debated theory called “disk instability,” which tries to explain how planets similar to Jupiter are formed.
    • The model is for giant planet formation where a protoplanetary disk becomes dense and cool enough to be unstable to gravitational collapse and thereby resulting in the formation of a gaseous protoplanet.
  • According to the Disk Instability theory, matter slowly moves inwards in this disc as dust particles grow to centimetre-sized pebbles.
  • This is seen as the first step towards the formation of kilometre-sized planetesimals that eventually come together to form planets.
    • Planetesimals are solid objects thought to exist in protoplanetary disks and debris disks.

Source: IE

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