A New Earth??

A New Earth??

Planets form in disks of dust and gas that surround young stars. New images of a planet formation site around a sun-like star from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array have revealed stunning details, including a gap that is the same distance from the star as Earth is from the Sun, a distance measured as 93 million miles. Could a new Earth-like planet be forming?

Scientist predict that this new structure could mean that an infant version of Earth or even eventually a “super- Earth” could be beginning to form.

The star that this “earth-like” planet/ disk site is forming around has been named TW hydrae and has become a popular study site for astronomers. The star is about 10 million years old and unlike most stars afford astronomers an undistorted view of its complete disk.

Sean Andrewes of Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics says that “the new ALMA images show the disk in unprecedented detail, revealing a series of concentric dusty bright and dark gaps, including intriguing features that suggest a planet with an Earth-like orbit f forming there.

These discoveries though would not have been possible without the invention of the ALMA, a telescope that can, at maximum dish separation, reach up to 9 miles and resolve very fine details. 

By studying the evolution of this “baby-planet”, astronomers hope to better understand the evolution of Earth and other similar systems.