A new study by Caltech’s Konstantin Batygin and his colleague theorizes how super-Earths are formed.
Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)
Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)
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TechTranscript
00:00Scientists have a new theory to explain a strange consistency
00:05seen in planetary systems around other stars.
00:09Astronomers have found that many stars prefer their inner rocky planets to be all of similar sizes,
00:15but that size varies from system to system.
00:18This pattern can be explained if young stars develop narrow planet-factory rings.
00:24Small objects in the ring would tend to clump together forming a planet in a few million years.
00:31Gravitational interactions with the gas in the disk would shift the planet into an orbit closer to its star.
00:38This makes room for more planets to form one after another while the ring persists.
00:43The structure of a star's ring would determine the typical size of the planets in that system.
00:50Sparser rings would tend to form smaller worlds, while denser rings would make super-Earths.
00:56A ring should form just beyond the point where the star's heat vaporizes rocky materials.
01:03This theory is based on a similar concept proposed to explain the formation of the moons around the outer planets in our own solar system.
01:12The Entire