Artist’s conception of a young planetary system. NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC)
When stars are forming, they are surrounded by a protoplanetary disc of gas and dust.
This disc contains materials for creating new planets and, potentially, eventually a new planetary system.
Often, astronomers can spot gaps in the light from the gas and dust in the disc and use this information to infer the existence of growing planetary bodies.
But a new study suggests this isn’t always the case.
"If we don't see light scattered from the disc, it doesn't necessarily mean that nothing is there," says lead author Til Birnstiel of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.
As part of the study, the team looked at stellar discs that shine in visible or near-infrared wavelengths due to scattered or reflected light.
This scattered light is a result of starlight reflecting off tiny particles in the disc.
These particles are initially spread evenly throughout the disc, but eventually begin to change and clump together over time.
Some particles will clump together to form larger objects and eventually grow to become planets. But sometimes these particles break apart when they collide, rather than clumping together.
They can also move farther from or closer to the star in a process called ‘migration’.
By observing these processes in theoretical computer models, the team were able to learn more about how they effect what we observe in the young star’s disc.
"Growth, migration and destruction can have tangible, observable effects," explains co-author Sean Andrews of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
"Specifically, these processes can create an apparent gap in the disc when the small particles that scatter light are cleared away, even though larger particles still remain."
Birnstiel says:
“Throwing a stone in the air doesn't obstruct my view, but throwing a handful of dust in the air does.
Similarly, as small particles grow bigger in some areas of the disc, they don't obstruct our view any more and those regions appear empty."
In order to tell the difference between the different causes of gaps in a disc, the team are now conducting observations of TW Hydrae, a stellar disc known to have a gap, with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).
If the team find large grains within the gap, this will suggest the absence of a planet.
But if the gap appears empty, the argument will be stronger for the existence of an unseen planet.