Professor Lewis Dartnell, Professor of Science Communication, has written an article for BBC Sky at Night Magazine about a new study which has revealed fine-grain differences in the chemistry of the ingredients for building a planet.
The article discusses scientists’ current understanding of the raw materials that planets are assembled from and explains how a new study by a large partnership of astronomers using the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) telescope sheds light on the factors affecting the final outcomes of planetary systems and the level of variation in their chemical compounds.
Explaining how planets are formed, Professor Dartnell wrote: “Protoplanetary discs provide the raw materials that planets are assembled from. Within this swirling skirt of dust and gas surrounding a newly forming star, grains collide and coalesce together to create pebbles, which themselves amalgamate into large boulders, then planetesimals, and finally fully grown planets.”
He continued: “The exact composition of the local protoplanetary neighbourhood therefore determines the composition of each planet and is ultimately why, for example, Earth turned out so different from Mars or Neptune.”
Speaking about what the new study has revealed, Professor Dartnell explained: “What these [molecular] maps make abundantly clear is that different planets form in molecular soups with varying ingredients, depending on their location within the [protoplanetary] disc.”
He added: “This has huge implications for what sorts of planets will form at what distance from their star, and what their composition will be – all factors that will have a profound impact on our ideas of what a planetary system ‘should’ look like, and how habitable to life they might be.”
Read the full article on the BBC Sky at Night website.
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