Planet-and-Comet-Forming Dust Trap Imaged Around Young Star [Video]

Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have imaged and modeled a dust-filled region around a young star. The kicker? It's the first real-time look at the birth and growth process of larger cosmic objects such as comets and planets within a dust cloud.

"At first the shape of the dust in the image came as a complete surprise to us," says Nienke van der Marel, lead author of the article detailing the findings. "Instead of the ring we had expected to see, we found a very clear cashew-nut shape! We had to convince ourselves that this feature was real, but the strong signal and sharpness of the ALMA observations left no doubt about the structure. Then we realized what we had found."

As dust coalesces around a star, it tends to begin orbiting it. This means it reaches high speeds, and often times ends up colliding with fellow dust particles. Yet, science so far has proven that cosmic bodies, such as comets and planets, are the result of tiny particles joining through gravitational attraction. It's this cashew shape that creates a dust trap.

"The statistics of discovered exoplanets suggest that planets form efficiently. However, there are fundamental unsolved problems, such as excessive inward drift of particles in protoplanetary disks during planet formation. Recent theories invoke dust traps to overcome this problem," reads the abstract of the study, published in the journal Science.

It's these 'dust traps' - pockets of peace within the dusty bodies where that comets and such can form without being bombarded - that the team was looking for.

The dust trap observed, in the system Oph-IRS 48, however, was too far for planets to form, leaving mostly comets as its possible byproducts.

The findings give hope for future discoveries. Now that the reserachers can scrutinize the conditions surrounding the observed dust trap, more can be found.

"It's likely that we are looking at a kind of comet factory as the conditions are right for the particles to grow from millimeter to comet size. The dust is not likely to form full-sized planets at this distance from the star," van der Marel explained.

"But in the near future ALMA will be able to observe dust traps closer to their parent stars, where the same mechanisms are at work. Such dust traps really would be the cradles for new-born planets."