“The James Webb Telescope: Are We Alone?” from Anderson Cooper’s The Whole Story Get a peek inside the most powerful telescope ever built, and the show will premiere on CNN on Sunday, June 16th at 8pm ET/PT.
The giant asteroid impact likely occurred in a nearby star system. Beta Pictoris In recent years, two different space observatories have helped tell that story.
The Beta Pictoris star system is located 63 km from Earth. Light years This far-flung object has long intrigued astronomers because of its proximity and age.
While our solar system is estimated to be about 4.5 billion years old, Beta Pictoris is 20 million years old and is considered a “young planetary system,” said astronomer Christine Chen, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who has observed the system multiple times.
“That means it’s still forming,” she said during the presentation. 244th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Madison, Wisconsin, on June 10. “This is a partially formed planetary system, but it’s not complete yet.”
Chen used the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope to observe Beta Pictoris, which is home to two known gas giant planets, called Beta Pictoris b and c, in 2004 and 2005. At the time, Chen and his colleagues identified several different types of dust populations in the system.
“That’s why we were so excited to be able to re-observe this system in 2023 with the James Webb Space Telescope,” Chen says, “and really hope to understand this planetary system in more detail, and we’re definitely doing that.”
Since Webb opened its infrared eyes to the universe in 2022, scientists have been using the space observatory to peer through gas and dust to conduct research. Supernova, Exoplanets and Distant Galaxy.
By comparing the Spitzer and Webb observations, Chen and her colleagues realized that the timing of the data collected 20 years ago was highly fortuitous, and that two of the large dust clouds had since disappeared.
Chen is lead author of a study comparing the observations that was presented at the conference on Monday.
“Most of JWST’s discoveries come from things the telescope detects directly,” Cicero Lu, a former astrophysics doctoral student at Johns Hopkins University and co-author of the study, said in a statement. “In this case, the story is a bit different, because our results come from something JWST didn’t capture.”
The team believes that the Spitzer data suggests that a pair of giant asteroids collided by chance shortly before the telescope observed the system.
“Beta Pictoris is at an age where planet formation in the terrestrial belt is still ongoing due to giant asteroid impacts, so what we’re seeing here is essentially how rocky planets and other objects form in real time,” Chen said.
Evidence for a giant impact
When Chen and her team observed Beta Pictoris in 2004 and 2005, they likely glimpsed evidence of an “actively colliding planetary system” but just hadn’t noticed it yet, she said.
In addition to the two known planets, previous studies have found Evidence of a comet And asteroids flying around the young system.
When comets and asteroids collide with each other, they produce dust fragments that help form rocky planets.
Chen said the impact, which happened just before Spitzer’s observations, likely shattered the massive asteroid into microscopic dust particles smaller than pollen or powdered sugar.
She said the mass of dust generated was The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaursis estimated to be 6.2 to 9.3 miles (10 to 15 kilometers) wide. The dust was then pushed out of the system by radiation from the central star, which is slightly hotter than the Sun.
Initially, astronomers thought that small objects were colliding with each other and replenishing the dust cloud seen around Beta Pictoris over time, but the powerful Webb Telescope couldn’t detect any dust at all.
Although giant gas planets are forming in this system, rocky planets are likely still forming.
Astronomers plan to observe the system further to see if more planets emerge. In the meantime, studying this system may help astronomers better understand what our solar system was like in its early days.
“The question we’re trying to contextualize is whether this whole process of terrestrial and giant planet formation is common or unusual, and the even more fundamental question is, are planetary systems like our solar system really that unusual,” Kadin Worthen, an astrophysics doctoral student at Johns Hopkins University and co-author of the study, said in a statement. “We’re basically trying to understand how strange and ordinary we are.”
Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore space with news of fascinating discoveries, scientific breakthroughs, and more.
Create an account to receive more news and newsletters from CNN. CNN.com