Earth wasn’t always spherical: Billions of years ago the planet looked like Skittles (photo)

It is a widely known fact that our planet is spherical, but researchers now claim that this was not always the case; At the very beginning of its journey, the Earth probably had a shape reminiscent of the shape of Skittles candies, the Daily Mail writes. .

Scientists had previously assumed that “protoplanets,” very young planets that have recently formed around stars, would be spherical in shape. In a new study, a team from the University of Central Lancashire decided to test this theory by simulating how planets might form from disks of gas around stars.

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The results of the research show that the newly formed planets are not round as previously thought, but have a flattened shape. Note that this was the first time in the history of science that scientists examined the three-dimensional shape of “newborn” planets in their simulations.

Co-author of the article, Dr. According to Dimitris Stamatellos, he and his team were quite surprised to learn that the “newborn” planets were actually flat spheroids that looked a lot like Skittles jelly beans.

The authors of the study state that they have been studying planet formation for a long time, but they have never thought of testing the shape of planets in simulations before. In fact, since most of the planets that scientists can observe today are spherical, or at least very close to it, scientists simply assumed that they were spherical. For example, Earth is flattened by 0.3% from its poles, 6% from Jupiter, and 10% from Saturn.

But the results of a new study show that planets were actually flattened by about 90% to begin with. The study’s authors suggest that this “Skittles phase” lasted for the first 1.5 million years of the planet’s existence. Simply put, our Earth probably looked like Skittles for the first third of its life.

Note that there are two leading theories of planet formation today. First. Chief investigator Dr. According to Adam Fenton, this is called the “core accumulation” theory. This theory proposes that planets are formed by the gradual growth of dust particles that come together to form increasingly larger objects over a long period of time.

The second theory is the “unstable disk” theory. Accordingly, planets form in a relatively short time because the gas disk orbiting the young star disintegrates very quickly.

In their new study, scientists used the second theory and simulated the formation of gas planets around a young star. Fenton said the team spent half a million CPU hours, but eventually scientists were surprised to discover that the protoplanets were not spheres at all.

The authors of the study suggest that the planets were initially flat because they formed inside a rotating disk. Simply put, the rotational force stretches and flattens the young planet, similar to a cook passing pizza dough.

It is thought that the planets will become spherical much later, as gas and other materials descend to the north and south poles much faster than the equator. Note that protoplanet observations are still extremely rare and have only become possible in the last few years; However, scientists believe that in the future, the flattening of “newborn” planets could be observed using telescopes.

By the way, if we take the theory of “nucleus accretion” as a basis, protoplanets will still remain spherical. So, according to the authors of the study, if they manage to observe oblate protoplanets, this will be strong evidence in favor of the second theory and the results of the scientists’ research.

Previously Focus About how old our Earth is, he wrote: scientists say the answer is not as obvious as it seems.