For the first time ever astronomers have witnessed a budding star system emerge for the cosmic fog.
Credit: Directed by: L. Calçada, M. Kornmesser Hosted by: S. Randall Written by: A. Briggs, S. Bromilow, B. Ferreira Editing: M. Kornmesser, L. Calçada Videography: A. Tsaousis Animations & footage: ESO, ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/M. McClure et al, M. Kornmesser, L. Calçada, ESA, NASA, BBC, B. Tafreshi (twanight.org), NASA Eyes on Asteroids, Vernazza et al./MISTRAL algorithm (ONERA/CNRS) Music: envato Web and technical support: E. Arango, R. Yumi Shida Scientific consultant: P. Amico Promotion: O. Sandu Filming Locations: ESO Supernova (supernova.eso.org) Produced by ESO, the European Southern Observatory (eso.org)
00:00We have observed the formation of giant planets in the disks around young stars before.
00:05But now, for the first time ever, we've discovered a planet-forming system that turns the clock back even further.
00:12Right to when the first specks of planet-forming material were created.
00:16Are we witnessing the dawn of a new solar system?
00:19Planets are born around young stars, which themselves form from giant clouds of gas and dust.
00:30These clouds collapse, and gravity from the nascent stars pulls in most of the material.
00:36The leftovers form a flat disk around the stars, a so-called protoplanetary disk.
00:41Tiny specks of dust and pockets of gas condense into solid material, and they collide and coalesce to form larger clumps, called planetesimals.
00:53Over millions of years, these grow further to finally become rocky planets, or the cause of gas giants.
01:01Our sun and its planets, including Earth, formed in exactly this way.
01:05If you want to know more about that, check out the video in the description.
01:08Now, a team of astronomers have observed a new planetary system, HOPs 315,
01:15that is causing a lot of excitement in the kind of nerdy circles I move in.
01:19It appears that, for the first time ever, we are witnessing the creation of the first specks of planet-forming material,
01:26and the moment a new planetary system is born.
01:30But how exactly do we know when the clock starts ticking on the formation of a new planetary system?
01:35Well, we look for the oldest solid materials.
01:40When a planetary disk is first formed, it is extremely hot.
01:44Generally, the first things that cool down enough to solidify are crystalline minerals, containing silicon monoxide.
01:52In our own solar system, these minerals are found trapped within ancient meteoroids.
01:58Many of them have not changed over time, and still hold the key crystalline minerals that geologists can use to date our solar system.
02:07And the best thing?
02:08We can analyse them right here on Earth.
02:11Like this meteorite here at the ESO supernova, a visitor from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that may have been orbiting our Sun since the beginning of the solar system.
02:24It was by radioactively dating rocks like this that we were able to date back the birth of our solar system to 4.6 billion years ago.
02:36Back to HOPS 315.
02:38What astronomers found in this planetary system is evidence for crystalline silicates just beginning to solidify.
02:44Specifically, they found silicon monoxide in its gaseous state and within crystalline minerals around the protostar.
02:52This suggests that they are witnessing the exact moment when it turns from gas into solid,
02:59and that we are seeing the very moment when the first specks of planet-forming material are created.
03:07As one of the involved scientists said,
03:10this process has never been observed in a protoplanetary disk before,
03:13or indeed anywhere outside our solar system, which makes this finding truly exciting.
03:20However, the initial observations gathered with the James Webb Space Telescope
03:24weren't sharp enough to figure out exactly where in the protoplanetary system the signal came from.
03:30So, the researchers turned to ALMA, in which ESO is a partner, to get data with better spatial resolution.
03:37With the ALMA observations, the team were able to determine that the signal they had picked up with JWST
03:43was indeed coming from the protoplanetary disk,
03:47tantalizingly from a region close to the star,
03:51at around the same orbit as the asteroid belt is in our own solar system.
03:55So, in HOPS 315, we are seeing this material at the same distance from the star
04:01as we find rocky planets and asteroids in our own solar system.
04:05Witnessing the dawn of a new planetary system is really cool in itself.
04:11But what makes HOPS 315 even more exciting
04:14is that it appears to look very similar to what our own solar system did 4.6 billion years ago.
04:21So, we can use this planetary system as a probe
04:24to find out what happened while Earth was forming
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