TW Hydrae is a young star sporting a beautiful protoplanetary disk that is almost perfectly face-on from our perspective. Within that disk, dark tracks have captivated astronomers who believe they hold clues to the earliest stages of planetary formation. In short, TW Hydrae is a stellar "petri dish," only 175 light-years away, showing us exactly where baby planets come from.
RELATED: A Nearby Star Is Birthing a Massive Icy World
This now-famous observation, captured by the
Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile
, has gone one step further. In March, astronomers studying the emissions from the protoplanetary dust
spotted something potentially groundbreaking
. Close to the 10 million year-old star was a region lacking dust, possibly evidence for a world being born at roughly the same distance from the star as Earth orbits the sun. Could this be the earliest stages of the birth of an Earth-like planet?
If so, the implications would be profound
.
However, after carrying out computer simulations of the TW Hydrae protoplanetary disk, an international team of researchers led by Barbara Ercolano
of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany,
believes there may be another explanation
for this innermost empty region and, sadly, it doesn't include a baby "Earth 2.0." In fact, the star may have aborted its birth.
RELATED: 'Baby Earth 2.0' Found in Young Star's Crib
When stars are young, they pump out huge amounts of ionizing radiation and blast out powerful stellar winds, vaporizing any dust that strays too close and blowing away any gases. In the case of a planet-forming disk around a young star, this could mean a region close to the star would be burnt away, leaving a gap.
ALMA observation of the TW Hydrae planet-forming disk, including the suspected Earth-like planet formation region that may, actually, be a region of photoevaporation.
S. Andrews (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA), ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
The process, called "photoevaporation," could be ongoing in the TW Hydrae system, directly impacting the innermost region of the disk. The outer rings in the disk, however, are still likely being formed by accreting exoplanets sweeping up material as they orbit, it's just the inner region that is being vaporized.
Although this is obviously bad news for seeing the birth of an Earth-like exoplanent, TW Hydrae is proving an unprecedented opportunity for astronomers to study the destructive nature of a star in its earliest stages of evolution.
Source:
LMU press release
GALLERY: The Most Mind-Blowing Space Spirals
R Sculptoris
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ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
Meet R Sculptoris, a dying star that is shedding its outer layers of gas, generating a beautiful spiral of radio emissions. This amazing sight was captured by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in the Chilean desert in 2012. Although rare, this kind of space spiral isn't unprecedented. In fact, there have been several space spirals seen in recent years that have excited, spooked, but, above all, awed onlookers -- here are a few of the most memorable.
MWC 758
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NASA, ESA, ESO, M. BENISTY ET AL. (UNIVERSITY OF GRENOBLE), R. DONG (LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY), AND Z. ZHU (PRINCETON UNIVERSITY)
The image on the right shows the actual observation of a very young star called MWC 758, which was spotted by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT). Each one of the dusty arms spiraling away from the central star are 10 billion miles long, or more than three times the diameter of Neptune's orbit. But what's driving this spiral? Using computer models (an example can be seen on the left), astronomers have realized that it is likely the gravitational force of a huge exoplanet (approximately 10 times the mass of Jupiter) that is stirring up the star's protoplanetary disk -- but the planet itself is hidden from view.
TW Hydrae
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S. ANDREWS (HARVARD-SMITHSONIAN CFA); B. SAXTON (NRAO/AUI/NSF); ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
While technically not a spiral, this outstanding observation by ALMA has revealed the wonderfully well-defined tracks etched out by the presence of baby planets on orbit around TW Hydrae, a million year old star that is only 175 light-years from Earth. Though beautiful, this observation is most profound in that it possesses a proto-planet in a very Earth-like orbit very close to the host star. Yes, we're basically looking at a star system that resembles our solar system 4.5 billion years ago.
LL Pegasi
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NASA/ESA/HST
In 2010, the Hubble Space Telescope imaged a ghostly pinwheel spiral surrounding a binary star system called LL Pegasi.
This bizarre cosmic phenomenon is caused by one of the stars dying, venting huge amounts of gas and dust into space. As the stars orbit one another every 800 years, the material expands into space like water being sprayed from a spinning garden sprinkler.
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Jan Petter Jørgensen via Vaeret
Probably the most striking example in recent years is that of the mysterious expanding shape that appeared over northern Norway on Dec. 9, 2009. Reflecting the early morning Arctic light, this vast spinning cloud expanded above the horizon, spraying a white spiral and blue tail.
Conspiracy theories swarmed as soon as photographs and videos hit the media. Was it a portal to another dimension? Did a black hole just appear in our atmosphere? Was the restarted Large Hadron Collider responsible?
As it turned out, the spiral was caused by a Russian missile after a failed test launch. The rocket, designed to carry nuclear warheads, spun out of control spewing fuel into the upper atmosphere, creating this beautiful spiral display.
MORE: Mystery Spiral Appears Over Norway
WR 104
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Keck Observatory
What a kerfuffle WR 104 caused in 2008.
The Wolf-Rayet star first gained attention when astronomers admired its spectacular spiral created by stellar winds colliding with the winds of its binary partner. But then we realized something. The Wolf-Rayet was dying, violently. And its violent death meant the massive star could collapse and generate one of the most powerful explosions in the cosmos: a gamma ray burst (or GRB).
WR 104 is only 8,000 light-years from Earth, and the fact that we can see its full spiral means that we are looking down the barrel of this potentially damaging GRB. Naturally, many people were concerned that we could become GRB toast and in the eyes of the media, WR 104 was dubbed the "Death Star."
Fortunately in 2009,
Discovery News spoke with Wolf-Rayet star expert
Grant Hill, of the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, who has other ideas about the deadly potential of WR 104.
UFO?
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Haribolman (YouTube screenshot)
UFO reports are often vague and include shaky video footage of a fuzzy light in the sky.
However, when the Australian press announced the arrival of a bizarre spiraling light over the Gold Coast in June 2010, many eyewitnesses captured high quality video and photographs of the event.
At the time, this "UFO" stayed true to its description; it was certainly an unidentified flying object.
But it didn't stay unidentified for long; the sightings coincided with the maiden flight of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. The spiraling effect was caused by a slight engineering fault causing the rocket to spin slowly, venting exhaust in a partial spiral.
RS Ophiuchi
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NASA/Richard Barry
We've all heard of supernovae, but what are "recurrent novae"?
In the case of the binary star system RS Ophiuchi, a small but dense white dwarf star orbits with a large, puffy red giant that is shedding huge quantities of matter. This matter is blasted into space in the form of a strong stellar wind, forming a spiral.
Interestingly, in this star system, the white dwarf captures some of the gas from its companion star, gradually accumulating it.
Once the gas reaches a critical mass and temperature, a massive explosion occurs, wiping out the expanding spiral. The process then repeats every 20 years or so.
Mars
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NASA/JPL/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
Let's shrink our spirals from the astrophysical to the geological (or, maybe, "areological"?) and look at these highly mysterious spirals on the surface of Mars. Yes, they're real, and no, they weren't created by intelligent Martians.
Geologists know of these kinds of formations on Earth and they are caused by volcanic activity. Hundreds of these features, measuring up to 30 meters wide, have been spotted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in Mars' Athabasca Valles. And, like their Earthly counterparts, geologists think they were formed by ancient lava flows when the Red Planet was volcanically active. Similar formations have been found in slow lava flows on Hawaii, for example.