The star Elias 2-27 is 378 million light years from Earth, around it there is a mass of gas and dust "this material will form planets, that is, it is a protoplanetary disk, its particularity is that it is very massive and gravitational instabilities occur in it," explains Teresa Paneque, astronomer graduated from the Master of Science in Astronomy mention of the University of Chile and first author of the research.

"This phenomenon (gravitational instability) is an optimal mechanism to form giant planets (like Jupiter!), being widely studied in contemporary astronomy, but this is the first time that robust observational evidence is obtained that it is occurring. This achievement was something like ‘catching‘ the system ‘red-handed‘," adds Paneque, who is currently a PhD student at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Garching, Germany.

The study of protoplanetary disks using the ALMA telescope allows us to infer the structure and dynamics of these objects. "Knowing these properties, we can understand more about the process of planetary formation. And in this study, we were able to observe for the first time several unusual characteristics: the gas is asymmetric and has perturbations in velocity near the spiral regions, the latter corresponding to theoretical predictions made for gravitational instabilities", indicates Laura Pérez, academic of the Department of Astronomy FCFM of the University, researcher of the Center of Astrophysics CATA and scientific guide of Paneque, during this research. "So, studying a disk like this allows us to advance in the understanding of this different way of forming planets, of which there are few observations because it seems to be quite unusual".

An international team

The research group was composed of 19 scientists of multiple nationalities, one of whom was John Carpenter, chief scientist at the ALMA observatory and co-author of the research. For him "the high angular resolution images obtained with ALMA at multiple wavelengths were key to study the morphology of the disk and the properties of the dust", who also explains that "the spatial location of particles of different sizes allows us to understand the processes of dust growth and to infer the origin of the spiral morphology".

Now, Teresa intends to continue investigating this phenomenon in her PhD, especially the composition and different chemical molecules available, to understand what are the primary "ingredients" to form planets. She will continue to work with the large network of collaborators studying protoplanetary disks at universities and research centers around the world.

For more information review

Note prepared by the ALMA Radio Observatory, here

Article in The Astrophysical Journal, here