By using the Gemini Planet Imager , an outside team of astronomers have enchant an image of a protoplanetary disc that partake in remarkable similarities with our own Kuiper Belt — though as it was at a much earlier time in our Solar System ’s history .
The young scheme , called HD 115600 , is place about 360 light - long time aside . A bright annulus of dust can be see surrounding the server star , which is just slimly bigger than our own . The disc of planetal rubble extends out at a distance between 37 and 55 AU , a length that ’s standardized to the one between the Kuiper Belt and our Sun . Also , the smartness of the saucer inculpate that it ’s incorporate of silicates and ice , which are also found in the Kuiper Belt . It ’s thus an excellent example of what our Solar System might have attend like jillion of years ago .
“ It ’s almost like take care at the taboo solar system when it was a yearling , ” mark main police detective Thayne Currie , an uranologist at the Subaru Observatory in Hawaii , in astatement .
More from the University of Cambridge outlet :
The current theory on the formation of the solar system hold that it originated within a jumbo molecular cloud of hydrogen , in which clumps of denser material formed . One of these clustering , rotating and collapsing under its own gravitation , formed a flatten spinning disc known as the solar nebula . The sun make at the hot and dense centre of this disc , while the planet develop by accretion in the cool outer regions . The Kuiper Belt is think to be made up of the remnants of this mental process , so there is a hypothesis that once the new system develops , it may look remarkably similar to our solar system of rules .
The discovery shows that the proto - planetary environs of our Solar System may not be uncommon .
Read the entire study at The Astrophysical Journal Letters : “ Direct Imaging and Spectroscopy of a Young Extrasolar Kuiper Belt in the Nearest OB Association . ”
[ University of Cambridge ]
AstronomyAstrophysicsScienceSpace
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