The planetary system PDS has a star at its center (in the large white circle) and is orbited by the planet PDS 70b (in the solid white circle) and a cloud of debris (in the dotted white circle). Further out, the large yellow ring is a planet-forming circumstellar disk with another planet, PDS 70c, in its inner rim.
ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO) /Balsalobre-Ruza et al.
When younger siblings are born, older children must learn to share. Something similar could be happening in a star system about 400 light years away. There, a still-forming planet appears to be zipping into the orbit of a gas giant. I’m already here.
If confirmed, this would be the first time two planets have been observed to share a common orbit. We know of many small asteroids called Trojans that co-orbit Jupiter, and even some around Earth, but these probably did not form in situ, but rather planets. It is thought that it was captured in a completely formed state by the gravitational field of .
now, Alvaro Rivas The University of Cambridge PhDs and their colleagues caught a glimpse of a dust cloud that looks like it’s either in the process of planet formation or is the debris of a planet. The dust cloud appears to be in the same orbit as the exoplanet PDS 70b. Jupiter itself is still in the early stages of formation. “If this is true, and if this leads to the formation of asteroids, moons, and potentially terrestrial planets, then the possibilities are wide open.” Trojans of this kind are born on the fly,” said Rivas.
To find the second planet, Rivas and his colleagues used the world’s second-largest telescope, the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, to locate the Lagrangian point of PDS 70b, i.e. We observed a gravitationally stable point where a Trojan object is likely to exist. They found dust balls around Earth’s lunar masses of centimeter-sized rocks.
“It’s a very young system,” he says. Matya Chuk At the SETI Institute in California. “This orbital material is primordial, forming with the planet, and this dust and possibly gas was collected at the Trojan tree point as the planet grew. That’s something we don’t have in our solar system.” is.”
We currently have only a snapshot of the suspected planet, but it is in the expected position if it is in a co-orbit. We’ll have to wait for a follow-up observation in February 2026 to fully confirm its orbit, and learn more about its composition may have to wait until 2030, when ALMA is upgraded, Rivas says. says Mr.
Even with more detail, the question of what to call this object remains. According to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a planet must be the only dominant mass within its gravitational field, a condition called “neighborhood sweep.” This is why Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet status. Large enough to be affected by its own gravity.
“If something were to form at the location of this Lagrangian point and it was the mass of the Earth, then the definition of a planet would be at war with the definition of a planet. [IAU] It’s the definition,” says Rivas. However, the IAU definition only officially applies to planets in our solar system, so the status of this baby planet is in a gray zone.
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