Universe Today

Neutral hydrogen gas streams between NGC 4254 and VIRGOH1 21. Image credit: Arecibo Observatory. Click to enlarge
New evidence that VIRGOHI 21, a mysterious cloud of hydrogen in the Virgo Cluster 50 million light-years from the Earth, is a Dark Galaxy, emitting no star light, was presented today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, D. C. by an international team led by astronomers from the National Science Foundation’s Arecibo Observatory and from Cardiff University in the United Kingdom. Their results not only indicate the presence of a dark galaxy but also explain the long-standing mystery of its strangely stretched neighbour.

The new observations, made with the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope in the Netherlands, show that the hydrogen gas in VIRGOHI 21 appears to be rotating, implying a dark galaxy with over ten billion times the mass of the Sun. Only one percent of this mass has been detected as neutral hydrogen – the rest appears to be dark matter.

But this is not all that the new data reveal. The results may also solve a long-standing puzzle about another nearby galaxy. NGC 4254 is lopsided, with one spiral arm much larger than the rest. This is usually caused by the influence of a companion galaxy, but none could be found until now – the team thinks VIRGOHI 21 is the culprit. Dr. Robert Minchin of Arecibo Observatory says; “The Dark Galaxy theory explains both the observations of VIRGOHI 21 and the mystery of NGC 4254.”

Gas from NGC 4254 is being torn away by the dark galaxy, forming a temporary link between the two and stretching the arm of the spiral galaxy. As the VIRGOH1 21 moves on, the two will separate and NGC 4254’s unusual arm will relax back to match its partner.

The team have looked at many other possible explanations, but have found that only the Dark Galaxy theory can explain all of the observations. As Professor Mike Disney of Cardiff University puts it, “The new observations make it even harder to escape the conclusion that VIRGOHI 21 is a Dark Galaxy.”

The team hope that this will be the first of many such finds. “We’re going to be searching for more Dark Galaxies with the new ALFA instrument at Arecibo Observatory,” explains Dr. Jon Davies of Cardiff University. “We hope to find many more over the next few years – this is a very exciting time!”

Original Source: PPARC News Release

Helical magnetic field wrapping around molecular cloud in Orion. Image credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF Click to enlarge
Astronomers announced today (Thursday, Jan. 12) what may be the first discovery of a helical magnetic field in interstellar space, coiled like a snake around a gas cloud in the constellation of Orion.

“You can think of this structure as a giant, magnetic Slinky wrapped around a long, finger-like interstellar cloud,” said Timothy Robishaw, a graduate student in astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. “The magnetic field lines are like stretched rubber bands; the tension squeezes the cloud into its filamentary shape.”

Astronomers have long hoped to find specific cases in which magnetic forces directly influence the shape of interstellar clouds, but according to Robishaw, “telescopes just haven’t been up to the task … until now.”

The findings provide the first evidence of the magnetic field structure around a filamentary-shaped interstellar cloud known as the Orion Molecular Cloud.

Today’s announcement by Robishaw and Carl Heiles, UC Berkeley professor of astronomy, was made during a presentation at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, D.C.

Interstellar molecular clouds are the birthplaces of stars, and the Orion Molecular Cloud contains two such stellar nurseries – one in the belt and another in the sword of the Orion constellation. Interstellar clouds are dense regions embedded in a much lower-density external medium, but the “dense” interstellar clouds are, by Earth standards, a perfect vacuum. In combination with magnetic forces, it’s the large size of these clouds that makes enough gravity to pull them together to make stars.

Astronomers have known for some time that many molecular clouds are filamentary structures whose shapes are suspected to be sculpted by a balance between the force of gravity and magnetic fields. In making theoretical models of these clouds, most astrophysicists have treated them as spheres rather than finger-like filaments. However, a theoretical treatment published in 2000 by Drs. Jason Fiege and Ralph Pudritz of McMaster University suggested that when treated properly, filamentary molecular clouds should exhibit a helical magnetic field around the long axis of the cloud. This is the first observational confirmation of this theory.

“Measuring magnetic fields in space is a very difficult task,” Robishaw said, “because the field in interstellar space is very weak and because there are systematic measurement effects that can produce erroneous results.”

The signature of a magnetic field pointing towards or away from the Earth is known as the Zeeman effect and is observed as the splitting of a radio frequency line.

“An analogy would be when you’re scanning the radio dial and you get the same station separated by a small blank space,” Robishaw explained. “The size of the blank space is directly proportional to the strength of the magnetic field at the location in space where the station is being broadcast.”

The signal, in this case, is being broadcast at 1420 MHz on the radio dial by interstellar hydrogen – the simplest and most abundant atom in the universe. The transmitter is located 1750 light years away in the Orion constellation.

The antenna that received these radio transmissions is the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope (GBT), operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. The telescope, 148 meters (485 feet) tall and with a dish 100 meters (300 feet) in diameter, is located in West Virginia where 13,000 square miles have been set aside as the National Radio Quiet Zone. This allows radio astronomers to observe radio waves coming from space without interference from manmade signals.

Using the GBT, Robishaw and Heiles observed radio waves along slices across the Orion Molecular Cloud and found that the magnetic field reversed its direction, pointing towards the Earth on the upper side of the cloud and away from it on the bottom. They used previous observations of starlight to inspect how the magnetic field in front of the cloud is oriented. (There is no way to gain information about what’s happening behind the cloud since the cloud is so dense that neither optical light nor radio waves can penetrate it.) When they combined all available measurements, the picture emerged of a corkscrew pattern wrapping around the cloud.

“These results were incredibly exciting to me for a number of reasons,” Robishaw said. “There’s the scientific result of a helical field structure. Then, there’s the successful measurement: This type of observation is very difficult, and it took dozens of hours on the telescope just to understand how this enormous dish responds to the polarized radio waves that are the signature of a magnetic field.”

The results of these investigations suggested to Robishaw and Heiles that the GBT is not only unparalleled among large radio telescopes for measuring magnetic fields, but it is the only one that can reliably detect weak magnetic fields.

Heiles cautioned that there is one possible alternative explanation for the observed magnetic field structure: The field might be wrapped around the front of the cloud.

“It’s a very dense object,” Heiles said. “It also happens to lie inside the hollowed-out shell of a very large shock wave that was formed when many stars exploded in the neighboring constellation of Eridanus.”

That shock wave would have carried the magnetic field along with it, he said, “until it reached the molecular cloud! The magnetic field lines would get stretched across the face of the cloud and wrapped around the sides. The signature of such a configuration would be very similar to what we see now. What really convinces us that this is a helical field is that there seems to be a constant pitch angle to the field lines across the face of the cloud.”

However, the situation can be clarified by further research. Robishaw and Heiles plan to extend their measurements in this cloud and others using the GBT. They will also collaborate with Canadian colleagues to use starlight to measure the field across the face of this and other clouds.

“The hope is to provide enough evidence to understand what the true structure of this magnetic field is,” said Heiles. “A clear understanding is essential in order to truly understand the processes by which molecular clouds form stars in the Milky Way galaxy.”

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation.

UC Berkeley News Release

Future astronomers will see this nebula in the sky. Image credit: David A. Aguilar. Click to enlarge.
Astronomers announced today that they have found the next Orion Nebula. Known as W3, this glowing gas cloud in the constellation Cassiopeia has just begun to shine with newborn stars. Shrouds of dust currently hide its light, but this is only a temporary state. In 100,000 years – a blink of the eye in astronomical terms – it may blaze forth, delighting stargazers around the world and becoming the Grand Nebula in Cassiopeia..

“The Grand Nebula in Cassiopeia will appear in our sky just as the Great Nebula in Orion fades away,” said Smithsonian astronomer Tom Megeath (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), who made the announcement in a press conference at the 207th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. “Even better, its home constellation is visible year-round from much of the northern hemisphere.”

The Orion Nebula is one of the most famous and easily viewed deep-sky sights. It holds special significance for researchers as the nearest region of massive star formation.

The star formation process begins in a dark cloud of cold gas, where small lumps of material begin to contract. Gravity draws the gas into hot condensations that ignite and become stars. The most massive stars produce hot winds and intense light that blast away the surrounding cloud. But during the process of destruction, stellar radiation lights up the cloud, creating a bright nebula for stargazers to admire.

“Orion may seem very peaceful on a cold winter night, but in reality it holds very massive, luminous stars that are destroying the dusty gas cloud from which they formed,” said Megeath. “Eventually, the cloud of material will disperse and the Orion Nebula will fade from our sky.”

Orion’s Trapezium
Of special interest to Megeath is a system of four bright, massive stars at the center of Orion known as the Trapezium. These stars bathe the entire nebula with powerful ultraviolet radiation, lighting up nearby gas. Even a modest telescope reveals the Trapezium surrounded by billowing ripples of matter gleaming eerily across the vastness of space. Yet the Trapezium is only the tip of the iceberg, surrounded by more than 1000 faint, low-mass stars similar to the Sun.

“The question we want to answer is: why are these massive stars sitting in the center of the cluster?” said Megeath.

There are two competing theories to explain the Trapezium’s location. One holds that the Trapezium stars formed apart from each other but descended to the center of the cluster, ejecting a spray of low-mass stars in the process. The other leading theory is that the Trapezium stars formed together in the center of the cluster and have not moved from their birthplace.

“Obviously, we can’t go back in time and look at the Trapezium when it was still forming, so we try to find younger examples in the sky,” explained Megeath.

Such proto-Trapeziums would still be buried in their birth cocoons, hidden to visible-light telescopes but detectable by radio and infrared telescopes. Searches at those longer wavelengths have identified many regions where massive stars are forming, but could not determine whether the protostars were alone or in collections of four or more stars that could be considered Trapeziums.

Cassiopeia’s Trapezium
Megeath and his colleagues examined one such protostellar clump in W3 using the NICMOS instrument on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array. They discovered that the object, which was thought to be a binary star, actually contained four or five young, massive protostars, making it a likely proto-Trapezium.

These protostars are so young that they appear to be still growing by accreting gas from the surrounding cloud. All of the stars crowd into a small area only about 500 billion miles across (just under one-tenth of a light-year), making this cluster more than 100,000 times denser than stars in the Sun’s neighborhood. This suggests that the massive stars in Orion’s Trapezium formed together in the center of the cluster.

The same physical processes that have carved the Orion Nebula now are molding the W3 nebula. The massive stars in this compact group are starting to eat away at the surrounding gas with ultraviolet radiation and fast stellar outflows. Eventually, they will destroy their dense cocoon and emerge to form a new Trapezium in the center of W3. However, the final form of the nebula and the time that it will reach maximum brilliance are uncertain.

“Who knows, in 100,000 years the emerging Grand Nebula in Cassiopeia may replace the fading Orion Nebula as a favorite object for amateur astronomers,” said Megeath. “In the meantime, I think it will be a favorite target for professional astronomers trying to solve the riddle of massive star formation.”

Megeath’s colleagues on this work were Thomas Wilson (European Southern Observatory) and Michael Corbin (Arizona State University).

Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists, organized into six research divisions, study the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the universe.

Original Source: CfA News Release

Distribution of stars in galactic companion. Image credit: PSU. Click to enlarge.
A team of scientists from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), including a Penn State astrophysicist, has discovered a companion to the Milky Way galaxy that is so big it previously had been undetectable. The result is the topic of a press conference during the meeting of the American Astronomical Society now taking place in Washington, D.C.

The study, lead by Mario Juric of Princeton and Zeljko Ivezic of the University of Washington, found a collection of stars in the constellation Virgo that covers nearly 5,000 times the size of the full moon. Penn State Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Donald Schneider, a coauthor of the investigation, is the Chairman of the SDSS Quasar Science Group and the SDSS Scientific Publications Coordinator. “The star cluster is located only 30,000 light years from Earth,” noted Schneider. “This is the same distance from us as is the Galactic Center, although the cluster lies in a different direction from the Center. It is likely that the cluster is the remnant of a small galaxy that has been captured and disrupted by the gravitational field of our galaxy.”

The galaxy is a huge but very faint structure, containing hundreds of thousands of stars spread over an area area nearly 5,000 times the size of a full moon. Although the structure lies well within the confines of the Milky Way Galaxy, at an estimated distance of 30,000 light years from Earth, it does not follow any of Milky Way’s three main components: a flattened disk of stars in which the Sun resides, a bulge of stars at the center of the Galaxy, and an extended, roughly spherical, stellar halo. Instead, the discoverers believe that the most likely interpretation of the new structure is a dwarf galaxy that is merging into the Milky Way.

“Some of the stars in this Milky Way companion have been seen with telescopes for centuries,” explained Princeton University graduate student Mario Juric, who is principal author of the journal article describing what may well be our closest galactic neighbor. “But because the galaxy is so close, its stars are spread over a huge swath of the sky, and they always used to be lost in the sea of more numerous Milky Way stars. This galaxy is so big, we couldn’t see it before.”

The discovery was made possible by the unprecedented depth and photometric accuracy of the SDSS, which to date has imaged roughly 1/4 of the northern sky. “We used the SDSS data to measure distances to 48 million stars and build a 3-D map of the Milky Way,” explained Zeljko Ivezic of the University of Washington, a co-author of the study. Details of this “photometric parallax” method, which uses the colors and apparent brightnesses of stars to infer their distances, are explained in a paper titled “Milky Way Tomography,” submitted to The Astrophysical Journal.

“It’s like looking at the Milky Way with a pair of 3-d glasses,” said Princeton University co-author Robert Lupton. “This structure that used to be lost in the background suddenly snapped into view.” The new result is reminiscent of the 1994 discovery of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, by Rodrigo Ibata and collaborators from Cambridge University. They used photographic images of the sky to identify an excess of stars on the far side of the Milky Way, some 75,000 light years from Earth. The Sagittarius dwarf is slowly dissolving, trailing streams of stars behind it as it orbits the Milky Way and sinks into the Galactic disk.

In the ensuing decade, a new generation of sky surveys using large digital cameras has identified numerous streams and lumps of stars in the outer Milky Way. Some of these lumps are probably new Milky Way companions, while others may be shreds of the Sagittarius dwarf or of other dissolving dwarf galaxies. Earlier SDSS discoveries include an apparent ring of stars that encircles the Milky Way disk and may be the remnant of another disrupted galaxy, and the Ursa Major dwarf, the faintest known neighbor of the Milky Way.

Preliminary evidence for the new dwarf galaxy, found toward the constellation Virgo, appeared in maps of variable stars by the SDSS and by the QUEST survey (a Yale University/University of Chile collaboration). “With so much irregular structure in the outer Galaxy, it looks as though the Milky Way is still growing, by cannibalizing smaller galaxies that fall into it,” said Juric.

Another group of SDSS astronomers, led by Daniel Zucker of the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy in Heidelberg and Cambridge University’s Institute of Astronomy, has used the SDSS to find the two faintest known companions of the Andromeda Galaxy, which is the closest giant spiral galaxy similar in size to the Milky Way. “These new Andromeda companions, alongside the new Milky Way neighbors, suggest that faint satellite galaxies may be plentiful in the Local Group,” said Zucker.

While the SDSS originally was designed to study the distant universe, its wide area, high precision maps of faint stars have made it an invaluable tool for studying the Milky Way and its immediate neighborhood. The 3-D map created by Juric and his collaborators also provides strong new constraints on the shape and extent of the Milky Way’s disk and stellar halo. Another Princeton graduate student, Nick Bond, is using the subtle motions of stars detected over the 5-year span of the SDSS observations to limit the amount of dark matter in the solar neighborhood. University of Washington graduate student Jillian Meyer is mapping the distribution of interstellar dust carefully studying the colors of stars found in both the SDSS and the infrared 2MASS survey.

Building on these many successes, the SEGUE project (Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration) will use the SDSS telescope, its 120-megapixel digital camera, and its 640-fiber optical spectrograph to carry out detailed studies of the structure and chemical evolution of the Milky Way. SEGUE is one of three components of SDSS-II, the three-year extension of the Sloan Survey that will run through mid-2008.

Fermilab scientist Brian Yanny, one of the SEGUE team leaders, is excited at the prospect of examining its just-completed, first season of observations. “The SDSS has already told us surprising things about the Milky Way, but the most exciting discoveries should lie just ahead.”

Funding for the SDSS and SDSS-II has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, the Max Planck Society, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The SDSS Web Site is http://www.sdss.org/.

The SDSS is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions, which include the American Museum of Natural History, Astrophysical Institute Potsdam, University of Basel, Cambridge University, Case Western Reserve University, University of Chicago, Drexel University, Fermilab, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Japan Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics, the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, the Korean Scientist Group, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (LAMOST), Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPA), the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics (MPIA), New Mexico State University, Ohio State University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Portsmouth, Princeton University, the United States Naval Observatory, and the University of Washington.

Original Source: Eberly College News Release

Artist illustration of Vega. Image credit: NOAO. Click to enlarge.
Strong darkening observed around the equator of Vega suggests that the fifth brightest star in Earth’s sky has a huge temperature difference of 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit from its cool equatorial region to its hot poles.

Models of the star based on these observations suggest that Vega is rotating at 92 percent of the angular velocity that would cause it to physically break apart, an international team of astronomers announced today in Washington, DC, at the 207th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

This result confirms the idea that very rapidly rotating stars are cooler at their equators and hotter at their poles, and it indicates that the dusty debris disk known to exist around Vega is significantly less illuminated by the star?s light than previously recognized.

“These findings are significant because they resolve some confusing measurements of the star, and they should help us gain a much better understanding of Vega’s circumstellar debris disk,” says Jason P. Aufdenberg, the Michelson Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona.

This debris disk arises mainly from the collision of rocky asteroid-like bodies. “The spectrum of Vega as viewed from its equatorial plane, the same plane as the debris disk, should be about half as luminous as the spectrum viewed from the pole, based on these new results,” Aufdenberg explains.

The team obtained high-precision interferometric measurements of the bright standard star Vega using the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) Array, a collection of six 1-meter telescopes located on Mount Wilson, California, and operated by Georgia State University.

With a maximum baseline of 330 meters (1,083 feet), the CHARA Array is capable of resolving details as small as 200 micro-arcseconds, equivalent to the angular size of a nickel seen from a distance of 10,000 miles. The CHARA Array fed the starlight of Vega to the Fiber Linked Unit for Optical Recombination (FLUOR) instrument, developed by the Laboratoire d’Etudes Spatiales et d’Instrumentation en Astrophysique of the Observatoire de Paris.

One major consequence of Vega’s rapid rotation is a significant drop in the effective atmospheric temperature by approximately 2,300 Kelvin (4,000 degrees Fahrenheit) from the pole to the equator. This effect, known as “gravity darkening,” was first predicted by theoretical astronomer E. Hugo von Zeipel in 1924.

The CHARA/FLUOR measurements of the brightness distribution of Vega’s surface also show it to be strongly “limb darkened.” Limb darkening refers to the diminishing brightness in the image of a star from the center of the image to the edge or “limb” of the image.

The new measurements are consistent with the “pole-on” model for Vega first proposed by Richard O. Gray of Appalachian State University, which proposes that Vega?s pole of rotation points toward Earth. The pole-on view of Vega means that the relatively cool equator corresponds to the limb of the star, such that the gravity-darkening effect further enhances the limb-darkening effect.

The CHARA/FLUOR data support the pole-on, gravity darkened model for Vega by showing that Vega’s limb darkening is 2.5 times stronger at a wavelength of 2.2 microns than expected for a star with a single effective atmosphere temperature. Archival observations from the International Ultraviolet Explorer indicate that this model for Vega is not complete. At far ultraviolet wavelengths, below 140 nanometers, the model is generally too bright.

Located at a distance of 25 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra, Vega rotates about its axis once every 12.5 hours. For comparison, the Sun’s average rotation period is approximately 27 Earth days. Vega is about 2.5 times more massive than the Sun, and 54 times brighter.

At Vega’s rapid rate of rotation, the star’s atmosphere is distorted, bulging 23 percent wider at its equator compared to its poles. This type of rotational distortion can be seen in images of the planet Saturn, where the planet’s equatorial diameter is roughly 10 percent wider than the polar diameter. A direct measurement of Vega’s rotational distortion is hidden by its pole-on appearance. However, the accurate angular diameter and darkening measured by CHARA/FLUOR are consistent with this distortion.

These results build upon recent measurements of Vega obtained by a team lead by Deane M. Peterson of the State University of New York, Stony Brook, using the Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer.

Co-authors of this result include Antoine M?rand, Vincent Coud? du Foresto, Emmanuel Di Folco, and Pierre Kervella of the Observatoire de Paris-Meudon, France; Olivier Absil of the University of Li?ge, Belgium; Stephen T. Ridgway of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, Tucson, Arizona and NASA; Harold A. McAlister, Theo A. ten Brummelaar, Judit Sturmann, Laszlo Sturmann, and Nils H. Turner of the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, and Mount Wilson Observatory, California; and David H. Berger of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

This work was performed in part under contract with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) funded by NASA through the Michelson Fellowship Program. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology. The CHARA Array is operated by the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA. Additional support comes from the National Science Foundation, the Keck Foundation and the Packard Foundation.

The National Optical Astronomy Observatory is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc. (AURA), under a cooperative agreement with the NSF.

Original Source: NOAO News Release

Computer illustration of a binary star. Image credit: Carnegie Institution. Click to enlarge.
New theoretical work shows that gas-giant planet formation can occur around binary stars in much the same way that it occurs around single stars like the Sun. The work is presented today by Dr. Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM) at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, DC. The results suggest that gas-giant planets, like Jupiter, and habitable Earth-like planets could be more prevalent than previously thought. A paper describing these results has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.

“We tend to focus on looking for other solar systems around stars just like our Sun,” Boss says. “But we are learning that planetary systems can be found around all sorts of stars, from pulsars to M dwarfs with only one third the mass of our Sun.”

Two out of every three stars in the Milky Way is a member of a binary or multiple star system, in which the stars orbit around each other with separations that can range from being nearly in contact (close binaries) to thousands of light-years or more (wide binaries). Most binaries have separations similar to the distance from the Sun to Neptune (~30 AU, where 1 AU = 1 astronomical unit = 150 million kilometers–the distance from the Earth to the Sun).

It has not been clear whether planetary system formation could occur in typical binary star systems, where the strong gravitational forces from one star might interfere with the planet formation processes around the other star, and vice versa. Previous theoretical work had suggested, in fact, that typical binary stars would not be able to form planetary systems. However, planet hunters have recently found a number of gas-giant planets in orbit around binary stars with a range of separations.

Boss found that if the shock heating resulting from the gravitational forces from the companion star is weak, then gas-giant planets are able to form in planet-forming disks in much the same way as they do around single stars. The planet-forming disk would remain cool enough for ice grains to stay solid and thus permit the growth of the solid cores that must reach multiple-Earth-mass size for the conventional mechanism of gas-giant planet formation (core accretion) to succeed.

Boss’ models show even more directly that the alternative mechanism for gas-giant planet formation (disk instability) can proceed just as well in binary star systems as around single stars, and in fact may even be encouraged by the gravitational forces of the other star. In Boss’ new models, the planet-forming disk in orbit around one of the stars is quickly driven to form dense spiral arms, within which self-gravitating clumps of gas and dust form and begin the process of contracting down to planetary sizes. The process is amazingly rapid, requiring less than 1,000 years for dense clumps to form in an otherwise featureless disk. There would be plenty of room for Earth-like planets to form closer to the central star after the gas-giant planets have formed, in much the same way our own planetary system is thought to have formed.

Boss points out, “This result may have profound implications in that it increases the likelihood of the formation of planetary systems resembling our own, because binary stars are the rule in our galaxy, not the exception.” If binary stars can shelter planetary systems composed of outer gas-giant planets and inner Earth-like planets, then the likelihood of other habitable worlds suddenly becomes roughly three times more probable–up to three times as many stars could be possible hosts for planetary systems similar to our own. NASA’s plans to search for and characterize Earth-like planets in the next decade would then be that much more likely to succeed.

One of the key remaining questions about the theoretical models is the correct amount of shock heating inside the planet-forming disk, as well as the more general question of how rapidly the disk is able to cool. Boss and other researchers are actively working to better understand these heating and cooling processes. Given the growing observational evidence for gas-giant planets in binary star systems, the new results suggest that shock heating in binary disks cannot be too large, or it would prevent gas-giant planet formation.

Original Source: Carnegie News Release