Jupiter Like Protoplanet

• 08 Apr 2022

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.

• The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and ESA (European Space Agency).

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