Astronomers have found the first evidence of two planets sharing the same orbit around a star. Photos/Space/NASA
FLORIDA – For astronomer have found the first evidence of two siblings planet that share the same orbit around a star. The first planet is the larger PDS 70b exoplanet and another planet, called the Trojan planet, was detected as a dust cloud 400 light years from Earth.
This cloud of dust matter twice the weight of Earth’s moon eventually condenses into a planet, creating two worlds that share the same orbit around a star. The dust cloud could be debris from what was once a planet, meaning it is a pair of Trojans orbiting around the young star PDS 70.
Trojan planets, worlds that share the same orbit around the same star, have been theorized for at least two decades. However, this is the first time evidence has been found to support the Trojan planet concept.
This discovery is exciting, because it can provide clues about how planetary systems form. This research was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics on 19 July 2023.
“This is the first time we have found evidence of the accumulation of a dust cloud twice the mass of the moon in the correct region of the young planet’s orbit. This Trojan planet is a ‘fossil’ from the process of planet formation,” said Olga Balsalobre-Ruza, student at the Center for Astrobiology in Space to Space.com, Thursday (20/7/2023).
It’s thought that Trojan planets form when dust clouds become trapped in a region of combined gravitational pull between the parent star and planet so that it can hold material in a stable manner, called the Lagrangian zone. Space scientists typically use near-Earth Lagrangian gravitational stability points to “park” instruments such as the James Webb Space Telescope.
The team detected this Trojan planet in the form of a dust cloud that follows the young planet using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a network of radio telescopes in Chile. They were told it was evidence of a Trojan planet as it was within the orbit of the planet PDS 70b in the Lagrangian L5 region, where the Trojans were expected to form.
2023-07-20 14:56:45
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