The solar system could have been different: It became clear why giant planets are often not visible

The authors of a new study published in the journal Science have presented a possible reason why gas giant planets rarely form near red dwarfs, the most numerous stars in the Milky Way. Inverse writes that scientists believe that even our solar system may look different and that life could not have arisen on Earth if it were not for a certain combination of conditions.

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Astronomers believe that if extraterrestrial life is discovered on other planets, those planets would most likely orbit red dwarf stars. There are more stars like this in the Milky Way, and therefore scientists are particularly interested in these star systems. But there is a mystery: Giant gas planets such as Jupiter or Saturn very rarely appear near red dwarfs, and often they are not there at all. The authors of a new study found a possible cause.

Important

Using the Webb Space Telescope and the ground-based ALMA radio telescope, scientists observed a very young red dwarf star and its surrounding protoplanetary disk in the Orion Nebula. The protoplanetary disk, composed of gas and dust, is where planets begin to form.

Like many dwarf stars, this star is located in a region with neighbors of several massive stars whose mass is 10 times greater than that of the Sun and whose luminosity is 100 times greater than that of our star. These massive stars constantly emit strong streams of ultraviolet radiation, and scientists believe this damages the protoplanetary disk.

When this radiation hits a proto-planetary disk, the gas inside it heats up, the authors of the study say. Therefore, the gas molecules begin to move faster and the gravity of the young star cannot control them. So they fly further into space. This is called photoevaporation.

Modeling has shown that the protoplanetary disk is losing gas at a very high rate due to the strong radiation of the young star’s neighbors. Therefore, the raw materials required for the formation of gas giant planets must disappear within approximately 130 thousand years. But this is much earlier than planets began to form in the protoplanetary disk. Scientists concluded that planets similar to Jupiter or Saturn will never appear near this red dwarf, only small rocky planets like Mars or Earth will form.

The authors of the study believe that the reason why gas giants are rarely or never found near dwarf stars is that they do not have a strong gravitational pull. This gravity cannot contain gas molecules escaping from the protoplanetary disk.

At the same time, larger stars such as the Sun have stronger gravity, so most of the heated gas remains in the protoplanetary disk and the planet formation process begins. Recent research shows that the solar system also formed under the influence of strong radiation from neighboring stars. However, the Sun’s gravity did not allow large amounts of gas to escape. The solar system would probably look different if our stellar neighbors did not emit strong radiation. Scientists believe that there will be more planets similar to Jupiter and that Jupiter itself will be much larger. So there’s a chance that life on Earth might have been very different if it had emerged.

As I already wrote FocusA planet eaten by a dead star helped reveal the space cannibal’s past. For the first time, scientists have discovered a unique metal trace left by an absorbed planet on the surface of a dead star.