ALMA Reveals Planet Beginnings

In 2014, the young star V960 Monocerotis began flaring, lighting up unexpected origins for the planets coming together around it. Theoretical calculations have favored the core accretion scenario for planet formation: Material gloms together into a core, which then gathers gas around it. The process...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSky and telescope Vol. 146; no. 6; p. 11
Main Author Young, Monica
Format Magazine Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Cambridge F & W Publications, Inc 01.12.2023
Subjects
Accretion
Astronomers
Astronomy
Dust
Planets
Wavelengths
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Summary:In 2014, the young star V960 Monocerotis began flaring, lighting up unexpected origins for the planets coming together around it. Theoretical calculations have favored the core accretion scenario for planet formation: Material gloms together into a core, which then gathers gas around it. The process takes tens of millions of years. However, observations of V960 Mon instead favor gravitational instability, in which disk material collapses suddenly, forming gas giants in mere thousands of years. Philipp Weber et al dug into the archive of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), using ALMA's longer wavelengths to probe denser areas within the spiral arms in the dust that surrounds the young star.
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ISSN:0037-6604