Artist illustration of the exoplanet AB Aurigae b. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)) The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a young protoplanet like Jupiter supporting an unusual one planetary formation theory, according to a new study. The subject of the image is the planet AB Aurigae b, a young gas giant located about 531 light-years away from our sun and estimated to be about 2 million years old. Scientists know that gaseous and rocky planets are formed from material clustered around a star in what is called a peristaltic disk. But AB Aurigae b seems to refute long-standing theories about the mechanics of planet formation because of its size and position. In fact, according to researchers who found this exoplanet, it seems to support an unusual theory of planetary formations known as “disk instability“- one that has been described as” intense and violent “. For Jovian planetsthe most widely accepted theory of planet formation is nucleus accretion, which is “a bottom-up approach where planets embedded in the disk grow from small objects – ranging in size from dust grains to boulders – colliding and sticking together. “as they orbit a star. the nucleus then slowly accumulates gas from the disk,” according to a statement describing this new study. AB Aurigae b, however, orbits its star at a distance of 8.6 billion miles, which is more than double the Pluto is from our sun. Given this distance, scientists would expect that a planet like AB Aurigae b would take a long time to form. But the protoplanet is already nine times more massive than Jupiter, and at a very young age. Scientists believe this is only possible through a different method called the “disk instability” approach. This approach is “a top-down model, where as a huge disk around a star cools, gravity causes the disk to split rapidly into one or more fragments of planetary mass,” according to the same statement. To conclude that this exoplanet was created by this alternative method, the researchers compared data from Hubble’s image of AB Aurigae b with data from the SCExAO terrestrial imaging instrument in Japan. Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. “The richness of data from space and ground-based telescopes has proved crucial because it is very difficult to distinguish between infant planets and non-planetary complex disk features,” the statement said. In fact, it’s not just the latest Hubble images used in the study – lead researcher Thayne Currie of the Subaru Telescope and Eureka Scientific have noted that Hubble archival data was vital to the findings. “We could not detect this movement of one or two years,” he said. “Hubble provided a timeline, combined with data from 13-year-old Subaru, that was sufficient to detect orbital motion.” With so much data from both instruments, scientists have been able to confirm their nucleus augmentation theory, although further observations are likely to be made using the James Webb Space Telescope after going online later this year. This study published April 4 in Nature Astronomy. Follow Stefanie Waldek on Twitter @StefanieWaldek. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and up Facebook.
