Thursday, July 10, 2003
13 billion year old planet
Hubble has done it again. The New York Times is reporting that Hubble has discovered a planet formed just a bllion years after the Big Bang, approximately 13 billion years ago, hinting that planets might be more abundant than thought before. The planet, far larger than Jupiter, was found in the M4 star cluster.
The observations challenged a widely held view among astrophysicists that planets could not have formed that early because the universe had yet to generate the enough heavy elements as raw material needed to make them. Planet-making ingredients include silicon, iron and other elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. These so-called metallic elements are cooked in the nuclear furnaces of stars and accumulate in the ashes of dying stars that are recycled in new stars and their families of planets. If a planet has now been detected from a time when heavy elements were extremely rare, the astronomers reasoned, the discovery shows that theories of planetary formation may have to be revised.
The BBC is carrying a similar story on the discovery.
The observations challenged a widely held view among astrophysicists that planets could not have formed that early because the universe had yet to generate the enough heavy elements as raw material needed to make them. Planet-making ingredients include silicon, iron and other elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. These so-called metallic elements are cooked in the nuclear furnaces of stars and accumulate in the ashes of dying stars that are recycled in new stars and their families of planets. If a planet has now been detected from a time when heavy elements were extremely rare, the astronomers reasoned, the discovery shows that theories of planetary formation may have to be revised.
The BBC is carrying a similar story on the discovery.
