6th March, 2024
CHIRANJIT MITRA
● Planets are born within swirling gas and dust disks surrounding young stars. ● These disks act like cosmic construction sites, providing the raw materials for planets to form. ● Until now, witnessing the end stage of one of these disks has been elusive.
● With its infrared vision, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can peer into the dusty depths of planet-forming disks. ● JWST has captured images of a young star with a disk in the final dispersal stages.
● The disk in the JWST images is no longer a dense swirling cloud. ● It has thinned out significantly and is actively blown away by the star's radiation. ● This signals the end of the active planet-forming era around this star.
● Scientists have detected winds emanating from this aging disk for the first time. ● These winds carry away the remaining gas and dust, leaving the young planets behind.
● This discovery gives us a timeline – we know how long planets must gobble up the gas in their disk before it disappears. ● It helps us understand the factors influencing planet formation.
● Studying the dispersal of planet-forming disks aids in understanding exoplanets (planets outside our solar system). ● It helps explain the diversity of planet types we observe in the universe.