{"id":121566,"date":"2021-07-27T19:52:35","date_gmt":"2021-07-27T14:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=121566"},"modified":"2021-07-27T19:52:35","modified_gmt":"2021-07-27T14:22:35","slug":"moon-forming-region-seen-around-exoplanet-for-the-first-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/moon-forming-region-seen-around-exoplanet-for-the-first-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Moon-forming region seen around exoplanet for the first time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Source<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/sci-tech\/science\/moon-forming-region-seen-around-exoplanet-for-the-first-time\/article35513174.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Hindu<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>Synopsis<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Scientists for the first time have spotted a Moon-forming region around a planet beyond our solar system. The research offers a deeper understanding of the formation of planets and moons.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>Background<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters has for the first time spotted a Moon-forming region around a planet beyond our solar system.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">More than 4,400 planets have been discovered outside our solar system, called exoplanets.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, no circumplanetary discs had been found until now as all known exoplanets resided in \u201cmature\u201d (fully developed) solar systems, except the two infant gas planets orbiting PDS 70.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><b>Findings of the study<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The researchers used the ALMA observatory in Chile&#8217;s Atacama Desert to detect the <\/span><b>disc of swirling material accumulating around <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">one of two infant planets seen orbiting a young star called PDS 70.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The disc around PDS 70c possesses enough mass to produce up to three moons, of the size of Earth&#8217;s moon.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is called a<\/span><b> circumplanetary disc, and it is from these that moons are born. <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The discovery offers a deeper understanding of the formation of planets and moons.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><b>About PDS 70<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The orange-coloured star PDS 70, roughly the same mass as our Sun, is about 5 million years old.\u00a0 The star is approximately 370 light-years from Earth.\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 9.5 trillion km.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The system has two planets (PDS 70b and PDS 70c) around it which are even younger. Both planets are similar (although larger) to Jupiter, a gas giant.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was around one of the two planets, called PDS 70c, that a Moon-forming disc was observed.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><b>Birth of a moon:<\/b><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stars burst to life within clouds of interstellar gas and dust scattered throughout galaxies. Leftover material spinning around a new star then combines to form planets and circumplanetary discs surrounding some planets similarly yield moons.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The dominant mechanism thought to underpin planet formation is called <\/span><b>\u201ccore accretion&#8221;.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In this scenario, <\/span><b>small dust grains, coated in ice, gradually grow to larger and larger sizes through successive collisions <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">with other grains.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This continues until the grains have grown to the size of a planetary core. Once the core is formed, the young planet develops a strong enough gravitational potential to accrete gas which will form its atmosphere.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some nascent planets attract a disc of material around them and the process of core accretion begins which eventually leads to the formation of moons around planets.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: The Hindu\u00a0 Synopsis: Scientists for the first time have spotted a Moon-forming region around a planet beyond our solar system. The research offers a deeper understanding of the formation of planets and moons. Background: A study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters has for the first time spotted a Moon-forming region around a planet&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/moon-forming-region-seen-around-exoplanet-for-the-first-time\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Moon-forming region seen around exoplanet for the first time<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10322,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[216],"class_list":["post-121566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-3","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":1700786637,"cached_date":1704884595},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10322"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}