Four-hundred fifty light-years from Earth, a young star is glowing at the center of a system of concentric rings made from gas and dust, and it is producing planets, one for each gap in the ring.

Its discovery has shaken solar system origin theories to their core. Mayer Humi, a scientist from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, believes it provides an apt study target for theories about protoplanetary rings around stars. The research is published in the Journal of Mathematical Physics, by AIP Publishing.

The star, HL Tauri, is located in the constellation Taurus and awakened interest in Pierre-Simon Laplace's 1796 conjecture that celestial clouds of gas and dust around new stars condense to form rings and then planets. An exciting image of HL Tauri captured in 2014 by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array is the first time planetary rings have been photographed in such crisp detail, an observational confirmation of Laplace's conjecture.

"We can observe many gas clouds in the universe that can evolve into a solar system," Humi said. "Recent observational data shows solar systems are abundant in the universe, and some of them might harbor different types of life."

Humi, alongside some of the greatest astronomers throughout history, wondered about the creation of solar systems and their evolution in the universe. How do they form and what trajectory will they follow in the future?

"The basic issue was and is how a primordial cloud of gas can evolve under its own gravitation to create a solar system," Humi said.

Humi uses the Euler-Poisson equations, which describe the evolution of gas clouds, and reduces them from six to three model equations to apply to axi-symmetric rotating gas clouds.

In the paper, Humi considers the fluid in the primordial gas cloud to be an incompressible, stratified fluid flow and derives time dependent solutions to study the evolution of density patterns and oscillations in the cloud.

Humi's work shows that, with the right set of circumstances, rings could form from the cloud of dust and gas, and it lends credence to Laplace's 1796 hypothesis that our solar system formed from a similar dust and gas cloud around the sun.

"I was able to present three analytical solutions that demonstrate rings can form, insight that cannot be obtained from the original system of equations," Humi said. "The real challenge is to show that the rings can evolve further to create the planets."

Research Report: "On the evolution of a primordial interstellar gas cloud"

Related Links
American Institute Of Physics
Lands Beyond Beyond - extra solar planets - news and science
Life Beyond Earth

Tweet

Thanks for being here; We need your help. The Space Media Network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceMediaNetwork Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal		SpaceMediaNetwork Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only

Carbon-rich exoplanets may be made of diamonds
Tempe AZ (SPX) Sep 11, 2020
As missions like NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, TESS and Kepler continue to provide insights into the properties of exoplanets (planets around other stars), scientists are increasingly able to piece together what these planets look like, what they are made of and if they could be habitable or even inhabited. In a new study published recently in The Planetary Science Journal, a team of researchers from Arizona State University and the University of Chicago have determined that some carbon-rich exop ... read more