The James Webb Space Telescope has cracked a 20-year-old puzzle about why some old stars can have large planets.
Scientists were perplexed by this, as stars in the early universe primarily consisted of light elements, such as hydrogen and helium, with little to no presence of heavier elements, like carbon and iron, that form the essence of planets.
, scientists thought.
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The James Webb space telescope has discovered an enormous “grand design” spiral galaxy in the early universe. Researchers are stumped as they try to figure out how it grew so large so quickly.
Scientists have discovered that when planetary disks have minimal amounts of heavy, metallic elements, they can persist for much longer periods than previously supposed.
The existence of these distant star-forming regions also means that planets have longer to form and come to maturity compared to star-forming regions closer to home within our own galaxy.
James Webb’s observations
A galaxy located 199,000 light-years from our planet.
The light and electromagnetic waves emitted by these stars and their surroundings have shown that they harbor long-lasting planetary systems. According to astronomer Marchi and his team, this could occur in two possible ways.
Stars made from light elements don’t support a great deal of radioactive decay elements because heavier elements are scarce. As a result, these stars have less energy available to force away their planetary disks, which could potentially make the disks last much longer than those around suns with more heavy elements.
An alternative possibility is that a star composed of just light elements arises from a gigantic cloud of dust and gas. The enormous dust cloud left behind after the star’s formation would create a huge disk around it, which may persist for an extended period, even though light-element stars emit radiation at the same rate as stars composed of heavier elements.
“This is truly exhilarating,” said Ariel Alvarez, chief scientist for the Gemini Observatory at the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab in Tucson.
