Planets Form In Surprising 'Sandwiched' Way, Shedding Light On Life's Origins: Study
A new study challenges existing notions of how planets are formed in the discs of gas and dust surrounding young stars. These discs are also known as protoplanetary discs (or accretion discs) and are credited for birthing planets.
The study could help scientists understand not only how planets form, but also how life is created on them. Findings from the study were presented at NAM2023 and it has been submitted for peer-review to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
What is a sandwiched planet formation?
By studying data from observations and models, researchers found that two large protoplanets (planets that are still forming) orbiting a young star can produce a smaller planet between them. Scientists have referred to this as "sandwiched planet formation."
According to the researchers, this happens due to two larger planets limiting the amount of dust that flows into the inner portions of the protoplanetary disc that is continually collected by the two planets. During this process, a planet that forms between the two giant ones will be smaller.
"This is very different to the conventional view of planet formation, where we typically expect that the planets form sequentially from the inside to the outside of the disk and get more and more massive further out," Dr. Farzana Meru, an Associate Professor at the University of Warwick, said in a statement.
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"What is also really interesting is that there are examples that we have found from exoplanet observations that actually show this sandwiched planet architecture 〞 where the middle planet is less massive than its neighbors; it is a reasonable proportion of the systems too."
While more research is needed to understand the veracity of such claims, scientists believe that it could also help explain the existence of Mars and Uranus, both of which are smaller planets orbiting between larger planets in our solar system.
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Mars could have been possibly sandwiched by Earth and Jupiter and Uranus could have undergone the same treatment between Saturn and Neptune, scientists think. The remaining dust and gas led to the creation of asteroids and comets that account for the asteroid belt, Kuiper Belt, and Oort Cloud in our solar system.
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