The study of four newborn planets in the V1298 Tau system provides a snapshot of the transformation process to become the most prevalent planet types in the galaxy.
The most common planets in our galaxy are between the size of Earth and Neptune (super-Earths and sub-Neptunes). However, they do not exist in the solar system, so their formation mechanisms still have many gaps.
These planets, as determined, could lose much of their atmosphere during their first years of life and transition from giant planets, like those in the solar system, to sub-Neptunes.
An international team, with the participation of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC), in Spain, found a key link to determine how this process of change occurs, according to a study published Nature.
V1298 Tau is a young star, it is about 20 million years old, compared to the Sun’s 4.5 billion years, and due to its activity it had not been possible to accurately measure the mass of its planets in formation.
For this study, the team used an “ingenious technique” based on the mutual gravity between planets to overcome this obstacle, says Enric Pallé, a researcher at the IAC.
The four giant planets in formation range in size from Neptune to Jupiter, but – unlike growing babies – research shows they are extraordinarily bloated worlds that are shrinking in size and constantly losing their atmosphere.
The researchers thus saw a preview of what will become a very normal planetary system, since it is likely that the four will contract until they become super-Earths and sub-Neptunes.
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Study indicates that new planets are not very dense
The study offers a fundamental piece to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the most common planetary systems in the galaxy and will help understand why our solar system is an exception.
For a decade, the team used a battery of ground- and space-based telescopes to precisely measure when each planet passed in front of the star, an event known as a transit, which allowed for robust measurements of their masses.
The results were surprising, because although they have between five and ten times the radius of the Earth, their masses are only five to fifteen times that of our planet.
That is, they are incredibly sparse and more “similar to cotton candy the size of a planet than to rocky worlds like our Earth,” explains the IAC in a statement.
By comparing their masses with their radii, it was determined that “they are exceptionally spongy and that, in the next millions of years, they will lose a large part of their atmosphere to space due to the intense radiation of their star,” highlights fellow IAC researcher Felipe Murgas.
This feature helps solve a historical puzzle: in general, sub-Neptune planets undergo a very radical transformation at the beginning of their lives, losing much of their initial atmospheres and cooling rapidly as the gas disk that surrounded their star disappears.
V1298 Tau is a “key link between the star-forming nebulae we see all over the sky and the mature planetary systems we have discovered in their thousands,” according to Erik Petigura of the IAC.
Understanding such systems may also help explain why our own solar system lacks the super-Earths and sub-Neptunes that are so abundant elsewhere in the galaxy.
With information from EFE
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