A planet may be forming in the habitable zone of an alien sun
A young sunlike star about 176 light-years away may have its own planet in an Earth-like orbit someday.
Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile have found evidence of what may be a planet forming in an Earth-like orbit around the star TW Hydrae.
The researchers discovered a gap in the star's planet-forming disk, known formally as a protoplanetary disk, that is about the same distance from TW Hydrae as the Earth is from the sun.
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This gap could hint at the formation of a nascent planet in what may be the habitable zone in relation to its sun, an orbit in which liquid water can be supported on the planet's surface.
"The new ALMA images show the disk in unprecedented detail, revealing a series of concentric dusty bright rings and dark gaps, including intriguing features that suggest a planet with an Earth-like orbit is forming there," Sean Andrews, co-author on a new study about the budding planetary system in Astrophysical Journal Letters, said in a statement.
Scientists think that planets form from disks of debris circling stars. Sometimes that debris coalesces into planets that can clear their orbits around the star, creating a gap in the planetary disk which can be a tell-tale sign of a baby planet.
The possible planet in an Earth-like orbit circling TW Hydrae isn't the only newly forming world in the system, which is about 10-million-years-old, far younger than our sun's 4.5 billion year age.
The ALMA also spotted gaps in the disk which equate to about the orbits of Uranus and Pluto in our solar system, suggesting that there may be two more planets forming.
By learning more about this distant solar system, scientists may be able to help piece together the history of our own cosmic neighborhood's formation and how it fits into the context of the universe as a whole.
"TW Hydrae is quite special," co-author David Wilner, said in the statement. "It is the nearest known protoplanetary disk to Earth and it may closely resemble our Solar System when it was only 10 million years old."
This isn't the first time scientists have caught sight of a gap in a planetary disk.
A 2015 study details the discovery of at least one planet forming around the star LkCa 15 about 450 light-years from Earth.
"It's becoming increasingly clear that planet formation is a messy business — you don't instantly take a disk of gas and dust and turn it into a Jupiter," astronomer Adam Kraus said of the LkCa 15 in November.
"There's a finite time where you're assembling the planet, and you have blobs of material that are condensing and interacting. There's no guarantee those blobs will necessarily even turn into planets."
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Miriam Kramer worked as a staff writer for Space.com for about 2.5 years before joining Mashable to cover all things outer space. She took a ride in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight and watched rockets launch to space from places around the United States. Miriam received her Master's degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University in 2012, and she originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee. Follow Miriam on Twitter at @mirikramer.
