A near-Earth star is surrounded by a strange disk of cosmic debris unlike anything astronomers have ever seen. The surprisingly smooth disc suggests that no exoplanets have formed around the star, called Vega, and scientists can’t explain why.
The results could overturn everything we thought we knew about alien worlds and how they form.
Vega is the brightest star in the constellation Lyra, is twice as massive as our Sun, and is about 25 light-years from Earth. Given its high rotation speed, its proximity to our planet, and the fact that its magnetic pole is pointed directly at us, Vega is very bright in the night sky. It is the fifth brightest star visible to the naked eye from Earth. Vega is also part of the “Summer Triangle”, which occurs at the beginning of summer in the Northern Hemisphere.
“The Vega disc is smooth, ridiculously smooth”
In addition, Vega was the host star of an alien civilization in the 1997 science fiction film Contact, adapted from Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel of the same name.
For the past 20 years, astronomers have been studying the circumstellar disk of dust and gas around the star, a massive structure 100 billion miles (161 billion kilometers) wide, similar to the protoplanetary disk that gave birth to the planets in the Solar System 4.5 billion years ago , shortly after the formation of the Sun.
Vega is around half a billion years old, which means it is old enough to support worlds of its own. However, recent observations have indicated that there are no holes in the disk, suggesting that no exoplanets have formed around the star, according to LiveScience.
“It’s unlike any other circumstellar disc seen so far”
Now, in a new study, researchers used the James Webb Space Telescope al NASA to observe the disc. The images are the clearest observations yet of the star’s dusty disk and show it to be “about as smooth as a pancake, devoid of planets,” the scientists wrote.
“The Vega Disc is smooth, ridiculously smooth. It is a mysterious system because it does not resemble any other circumstellar disk observed so far,” explained Andras Gáspár, an astronomer at the University of Arizona (USA) and one among the authors research.
The team also observed the disk with the Hubble Telescope, and those images showed the same uniformity, but of course at a lower resolution. For now, researchers can’t explain why Vega can’t form exoplanets.
We also recommend that you read:
A NASA telescope has found something never seen before in black holes
Five ‘cosmic monsters’ observed with the Webb Telescope challenge everything astrophysicists know
Astronomers used the Webb Telescope to observe a galaxy that grew ‘upside down’
The Webb Telescope has discovered something unprecedented in a bizarre galaxy
Source: www.descopera.ro
