A cloud of dust and gas revolving around the infant star system 1,300 light-years away, we are not yet like a disk forming a planet. It consists of three rings, wrapped around three stars – and all three rings have different directions, with the other two incorrectly connected.
It is the first direct evidence that such misconceptions – known as ‘disc tearings’, and predictions in modeling – can occur in the wild.
But even though the Atticama Large Millimeter-Submillimeter Array (ALMA) has made the most detailed observation of the system, it is still unclear how the disk was torn.
A system called GW Orionis is located about 1,300 light-years away in the constellation Orion. It consists of two stars, orbiting each other at a distance of about one astronomical unit (average distance between the Earth and the Sun), orbiting a pair of eight astronomical units at a distance of eight astronomical units.
Around all three stars, a huge protoplanetary cloud of dust and gas, with rings at 46, 185 and 340 astronomical units from the center of the system.
That outer ring is the largest we have ever seen in the protoplanetary system; For comparison, Pluto’s average distance from the Sun is 39.5 astronomical units.
The protoplanetary disk, as the name suggests, is the material from which planets form around a star. First, the star needs to form and grow in a starry nursery. A lump of protostellar cloud material breaks gravitationally, and begins to spin. This spools huge disks of gas and dust that feed the rising star.
When this formation process is complete, the remaining material in the disk begins to clump together and eventually form planets and other small bodies. That is why, in planetary systems such as our solar system, planets and rock belts are more or less aligned with the fl .t plane around the star’s equator.
Systems around multiple stars, however, always incorrectly associate the planetary plane with its orbital orbits. Studying the protoplanetary discs around multiple star systems can help us understand how this abnormality occurs.
The bizarre misunderstanding in the protoplanetary disk in GW Orionis was first discovered in 2017 in ALMA observations.
ALMA observation (left) and VLT (right). (ALMA (ESO / NAOJ / NRAO), ESO / Exeter / Kraus et al.)
“We were amazed to see the strong misconception of the inner ring,” said Jiaqing B, an astronomer at Victoria University in Canada. “But the strange wrap in the disc is confirmed by the curved pattern that ALMA has measured in the gas of the disc.”
Another team of astronomers also made close observations using very large telescopes from both the ALMA and the European Southern Observatory.
“In our images, we see the shadow of the inner ring on the outer disk,” said Stephen Krauss, an astronomer at the University of Exeter in the UK.
“At the same time, Alma allowed us to measure the exact shape of the shadow kasti ring. Combining this information allows us to obtain a three-dimensional approach to the wrong ring and drawn disc surface.”
Fortunately, although misconceptions were only recently discovered, GW Orionis has been observed since 2008, and a third star of the system was discovered in 2011. This gave the researchers many years of data that led to the restructuring of the system’s orbit.
Using a 3D computer simulation of the system, Krauss and his team discovered that the contrasting gravitational effects of stars with different planes were capable of tearing the accent discs found in GW Orionis.
But Dwight and his team saw that the gravitational effect of the Shennigans of the stellar orbit, resulting in the observed rings, was not sufficient on its own.
“Our simulations show that gravity alone cannot be explained by pulling gravity through triangles. We think the presence of a planet between these wraps is necessary to explain why the disk was torn,” said astronomer Nienke van der Merrell. Victoria University.
“This planet has probably broken the disk at the location of the current inner and outer rings by cutting the distance of a dust.”
If there were a planet, it would be the first one we would ever find around three stars – but it is too early to make such a claim. Future observations of the system are in the pipeline to try and solve this interesting puzzle.
Research has been published in Astrophysical Journal Letters And Science.
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