How Do Planets Form? Ask This Colombian Astronomer!
Feb 27, 2022,02:00pm EST|
How Do Planets Form? Ask This Colombian Astronomer!
Andrew Wight Contributor
Colombian astronomer María Claudia Ramírez-Tannus will be part of a team using the newly-launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to unlock the mysteries of protoplanetary disks: disks of dust and gas where planets are going to form.
Ramírez-Tannus, a postdoctoral fellow at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), says until now, in order to learn about the formation of planetary systems astronomers had to compare the demographics of extrasolar planets (planets orbiting stars other than the Sun) with observations of protoplanetary disks.
"The problem is that before JWST we could only observe protoplanetary disks that are very close to our Sun and that are in isolation," she says, "With JWST we will study the effect of extreme environments - caused by the presence of massive stars - on proto-planetary disks."
Ramírez-Tannus explains that stars and their protoplanetary disks form in much denser regions and in the presence of strong radiation and thanks to the JWST astronomers will, for the first time be able to observe these extreme regions to observe the effect of massive stars on protoplanetary disks, and therefore in the formation of other planetary systems.
More:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewwight/2022/02/27/how-do-planets-form-ask-this-colombian-astronomer/
