Recent evidence of an alien planet that is taking shape astonishingly far away from its host star was recently found by astronomers. Such a discovery could challenge the established perception on how new planets are being formed.
The researchers were able to spot the planet-forming debris disk that was surrounding a red dwarf star using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The star called TW Hydrae is around 176 light-years away from the Earth, is located in the constellation of The Sea Serpent, Hydra.
The space between the yet-to-be-born exoplanet is around six to 29 times as big as the Earth, and is about 12 billion kilometers (7.5 billion miles) from TW Hydrae. This is about twice the distance of Pluto from the sun. Researchers say that once the exoplanet is confirmed, it would now be the most distantly orbiting alien planet found.
The planet’s gap and exceedingly far location creates issues for the planet-formation theory, which says that, planets form slowly over a span of tens of millions of years by accumulating gas, rocks, and dust from the protoplanetary disk.
According to the theory, formation of planet should happen slowly and relatively bigger gaps from the host star since orbital speeds are lessened, and there are fewer raw materials available if it happens in the outer layers of the disk.
Therefore, it would take TW Hydrae planet 200 times longer to form than planet Jupiter, which is around 800 million kilometers (500 million miles) from the sun. Researchers believe that Jupiter was formed in a course of over 10 million years.
However, the numbers simply don’t tally since according to research, the planet TW Hydrae, which is about 55 percent as huge as the sun, is only eight million years old.
Another theory says that a planet can form very quickly - say, within a few thousand years – when sections of the protoplanetary disk become gravitationally unstable and disintegrate on themselves. Even in this case, researchers say it is still unclear how the low-mass exoplanet could have formed.
