Can planets form and evolve within a protoplanetary disk—a region of gas and dust orbiting young stars—that is exposed to deadly ultraviolet radiation that would typically result in irradicating life on Earth? This is what a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal hopes to address as an international team of scientists investigated how extreme environments could influence a protoplanetary disk, specifically regarding the formation and evolution of planets.
For the study, the researchers used a combination of data obtained from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and computer models to analyze XUE 1, which is a protoplanetary disk located near the nebula NGC 6357 and approximately 8,000 light-years from Earth. This study builds on an initial 2023 study that used JWST to observe XUE 1, which was the first study to examine eXtreme UV Environments (XUE). In the end, the researchers for this recent study found that XUE 1 possesses enough gas and dust that could potentially form more than 10 Mercury-sized planets, along with possessing water vapor, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrogen cyanide, and acetylene, with acetylene being considered a building block of complex organic molecules.
“These molecules are expected to contribute to the formation of the atmospheres of emerging planets,” said Dr. Konstantin Getman, who is a research professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State and a co-author on the study. “The detection of such reservoirs of dust and gas suggests that the fundamental building blocks for planet formation can exist even in environments with extreme ultraviolet radiation.”
As scientists continue to learn more about protoplanetary disks, studies like this can help inform them about the processes behind exoplanet formation and evolution, and ultimately how life could evolve beyond Earth.
What new discoveries about extreme environments and protoplanetary disks will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: The Astrophysical Journal, The Astrophysical Journal Letters, EurekAlert!
Featured Image: Artist’s illustration of NGC 6357 with the protoplanetary disk XUE 1 (foreground). (Credit: Fortuna and Ramírez-Tannus 2023)
