• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Saturday, October 11, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Chemistry

Massive gas disk raises questions about planet formation theory

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
December 23, 2019
in Chemistry
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
IMAGE
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

IMAGE

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Higuchi et al.


Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) found a young star surrounded by an astonishing mass of gas. The star, called 49 Ceti, is 40 million years old and conventional theories of planet formation predict that the gas should have disappeared by that age. The enigmatically large amount of gas requests a reconsideration of our current understanding of planet formation.

Planets are formed in gaseous dusty disks called protoplanetary disks around young stars. Dust particles aggregate together to form Earth-like planets or to become the cores of more massive planets by collecting large amounts of gas from the disk to form Jupiter-like gaseous giant planets. According to current theories, as time goes by the gas in the disk is either incorporated into planets or blown away by radiation pressure from the central star. In the end, the star is surrounded by planets and a disk of dusty debris. This dusty disk, called a debris disk, implies that the planet formation process is almost finished.

Recent advances in radio telescopes have yielded a surprise in this field. Astronomers have found that several debris disk still possess some amount of gas. If the gas remains long in the debris disks, planetary seeds may have enough time and material to evolve to giant planets like Jupiter. Therefore, the gas in a debris disk affects the composition of the resultant planetary system.

“We found atomic carbon gas in the debris disk around 49 Ceti by using more than 100 hours of observations on the ASTE telescope,” says Aya Higuchi, an astronomer at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). ASTE is a 10-m diameter radio telescope in Chile operated by NAOJ. “As a natural extension, we used ALMA to obtain a more detailed view, and that gave us the second surprise. The carbon gas around 49 Ceti turned out to be 10 times more abundant than our previous estimation.”

Thanks to ALMA’s high resolution, the team revealed the spatial distribution of carbon atoms in a debris disk for the first time. Carbon atoms are more widely distributed than carbon monoxide, the second most abundant molecules around young stars, hydrogen molecules being the most abundant. The amount of carbon atoms is so large that the team even detected faint radio waves from a rarer form of carbon, 13C. This is the first detection of the 13C emission at 492 GHz in any astronomical object, which is usually hidden behind the emission of normal 12C.

“The amount of 13C is only 1% of 12C, therefore the detection of 13C in the debris disk was totally unexpected,” says Higuchi. “It is clear evidence that 49 Ceti has a surprisingly large amount of gas.”

What is the origin of the gas? Researchers have suggested two possibilities. One is that it is remnant gas that survived the dissipation process in the final phase of planet formation. The amount of gas around 49 Ceti is, however, comparable to those around much younger stars in the active planet formation phase. There are no theoretical models to explain how so much gas could have persisted for so long. The other possibility is that the gas was released by the collisions of small bodies like comets. But the number of collisions needed to explain the large amount of gas around 49 Ceti is too large to be accommodated in current theories. The present ALMA results prompt a reconsideration of the planet formation models.

###

The research team members are:
Aya Higuchi (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan), Yoko Oya (The University of Tokyo), Kazuya Saigo (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan), Hiroshi Kobayashi (Nagoya University), Kazunari Iwasaki (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan), Munetake Momose (Ibaraki University), Kang Lou Soon (Ibaraki University), Nami Sakai (RIKEN), Masanobu Kunitomo (Kurume University), Daisuke Ishihara (Japan Space Exploration Agency), and Satoshi Yamamoto (The University of Tokyo)

Media Contact
Dr. Masaaki Hiramatsu
[email protected]

Original Source

https://alma-telescope.jp/en/news/press/49ceti-201912

Related Journal Article

http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ab518d

Tags: AstronomyAstrophysicsSpace/Planetary ScienceStars/The Sun
Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

Harnessing Microwaves to Boost Energy Efficiency in Chemical Reactions

Harnessing Microwaves to Boost Energy Efficiency in Chemical Reactions

October 10, 2025
Wirth Named Fellow of the American Physical Society

Wirth Named Fellow of the American Physical Society

October 10, 2025

UTA Physicist Secures $1.3 Million Grant to Advance Neutrino Research

October 10, 2025

Energy Savings at Home Are Driven by Attitudes, Not Income

October 10, 2025
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • Sperm MicroRNAs: Crucial Mediators of Paternal Exercise Capacity Transmission

    1209 shares
    Share 483 Tweet 302
  • New Study Reveals the Science Behind Exercise and Weight Loss

    102 shares
    Share 41 Tweet 26
  • New Study Indicates Children’s Risk of Long COVID Could Double Following a Second Infection – The Lancet Infectious Diseases

    97 shares
    Share 39 Tweet 24
  • Revolutionizing Optimization: Deep Learning for Complex Systems

    87 shares
    Share 35 Tweet 22

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Health Behavior Patterns in Chinese Women Aged 40+

Measuring AI: The Power of Algorithmic Generalization

Innovations in Hereditary Angioedema Treatment: Present & Future

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Success! An email was just sent to confirm your subscription. Please find the email now and click 'Confirm' to start subscribing.

Join 63 other subscribers
  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.