Twisting planet-forming disks: 260 Earth-masses of dust spotted around young binary stars.
__________
Astronomers have recently captured images of two emerging stars engaged in a gravitational dance, twisting their planet-forming disks into a shape resembling a pretzel.
These observations, made using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), offer valuable insights into a developing binary star system. This discovery enhances our understanding of how binary stars and their planets form and evolve.
“We observe two compact objects, which we interpret as circumstellar disks surrounding the two young stars,” stated Felipe Alves from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in a press release. Since most stars are believed to exist in binary systems, studying their formation and how they can host planets similar to Tatooine is a major focus for astronomers.
“The size of each disk is comparable to our solar system’s asteroid belt,” Alves explained, “and the distance separating them is 28 times the Sun-Earth distance.” Together, these disks hold approximately 260 Earth-masses of dust, leading researchers to hypothesize that the system could eventually form rocky, Earth-like planets.
“This finding is incredibly significant,” noted co-author and MPE managing director Paola Caselli. “We’ve finally captured the intricate structure of young binary stars and the feeding filaments linking them to the disk they originated from. This provides crucial constraints for current star formation models.”
Alves emphasized, “While these observations align well with theoretical predictions, further study of young binary systems is necessary to deepen our understanding of how multiple stars form.
The new research was published in the journal Science.
