How Do Planet Factories Churn Out Super-Earths?

A new study by Caltech’s Konstantin Batygin and his colleague theorizes how super-Earths are formed.  Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)

Transcript

00:00Scientists have a new theory to explain a strange consistency

00:05seen in planetary systems around other stars.

00:09Astronomers have found that many stars prefer their inner rocky planets to be all of similar sizes,

00:15but that size varies from system to system.

00:18This pattern can be explained if young stars develop narrow planet-factory rings.

00:24Small objects in the ring would tend to clump together forming a planet in a few million years.

00:31Gravitational interactions with the gas in the disk would shift the planet into an orbit closer to its star.

00:38This makes room for more planets to form one after another while the ring persists.

00:43The structure of a star's ring would determine the typical size of the planets in that system.

00:50Sparser rings would tend to form smaller worlds, while denser rings would make super-Earths.

00:56A ring should form just beyond the point where the star's heat vaporizes rocky materials.

01:03This theory is based on a similar concept proposed to explain the formation of the moons around the outer planets in our own solar system.

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