Saturn-like rings formerly adorned the sun

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A "super-Earth" may not have been possible because of the rings of dust around our planet.

According to a new study, the sun may have been encircled by massive dust rings the size of Saturn before Earth and the other planets in our solar system formed.

According to NASA, Earth's dust rings may have prevented the planet from becoming a "super-Earth," which would have been up to 10 times the mass of Earth and twice its size. According to research, about 30% of the sun-like stars in our galaxy have super-Earths orbiting them.

Astronomers have some unanswered questions after seeing so many super-Earths in other solar systems, such as, "if super-Earths are so frequent, why don't we have one here?" In a statement, Rice University astrophysicist André Izidoro in Houston, Texas, said. Researchers led by Izidoro set out to recreate the solar system's birth in a computer simulation, which they called the solar nebula, to discover the answer to this question.

Using computer simulations, they concluded that high-pressure areas of gas and dust would have ringed the sun when it was still a child. Particles moving toward the sun's strong gravitational attraction may have heated up and released massive amounts of evaporated gas, resulting in these high-pressure zones.

Three different "sublimation lines" were found in the simulations when solid particles evaporated into gas. Solid silicate, ice, and carbon monoxide became gaseous on the lines closest to the sun or the hottest zones.

The simulations indicated that solid particles like dust slammed against these "bumps" and began to build. According to Rice University physics and astronomy professor Andrea Isella, "the result of the pressure increase is that it accumulates dust particles, and that's why we get rings," she said. There would have been no seeds for the planets to sprout if these pressure bumps had not been present. "Something has to halt them so they can grow into planets," Isella remarked.

Cooling of gas and dust encircling solar caused sublimation lines to get ever closer to the sun as the sun ages. Planetesimals—asteroid-sized seeds of planets—were able to form as a result of this process, which allowed the dust to collect on planets. According to our model, pressure bumps can operate as planetesimal manufacturers, indicating that they can concentrate dust.

According to Izidoro's statement, the pressure bumps controlled the amount of material accessible to build planets in the inner solar system.

Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars were generated by the closest ring to the sun, according to the simulations. The outer solar system's planets originated in the middle ring, while the Kuiper Belt, which lies beyond Neptune's orbit, is home to comets, asteroids, and other tiny bodies.

In addition, the researchers discovered that super-Earths may have evolved in the solar system if they replicated the delayed creation of the middle ring. "A lot of material had already entered the inner system and was accessible to build super-Earths by the time the pressure bump formed in those circumstances," Izidoro added. There may be some significance to the solar system's history in the period when this middle-pressure hump occurred.

Nature Astronomy published the findings on Dec. 30.

Reference : https://www.livescience.com/baby-sun-had-rings-like-saturn

Image source : https://pixabay.com/id/photos/tata-surya-matahari-air-raksa-venus-439046/

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