While some scientists are trying to understand just how life could come to be and what ingredients are necessary to make that happen, others are continuing in the quest to understand the hows of planetary formation. A new paper in The Astrophysical Journal examined the formation of rings in protoplanetary disks and found that planets may begin the process of accreting dust and gas far earlier in a star system’s life than previously thought.

Rather than using experimental observations, this team used computer simulations to model various planetary formation scenarios. Their results indicate that the dust may begin to come together into larger particles during the star’s protostellar stage. This means that the planets in the system are forming before the star is done forming. Lead author Satoshi Ohashi notes: It’s really surprising because during planet formation the dust grains should stay in the disk, but material is still falling into the central star during the protostellar stage. So we are thinking that planet formation could be a highly dynamic process.

The team compared their simulation results to the observations of 23 different ring structures observed using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile and found the two data sets agreed. We will get this planetary formation process figured out, y’all. Some day.

More Information

RIKEN press release

“Ring Formation by Coagulation of Dust Aggregates in the Early Phase of Disk Evolution around a Protostar,” Satoshi Ohashi et al., 2021 February 1, The Astrophysical Journal