SETI public: Astronomers Debate Whether Oldest Known Dust Disk Will Ever Form Planets

• Previous message: LARRY KLAES: "SETI public: A Moving Cluster Distance to the Exoplanet 2M1207 B in the TW Hya Association"

Astronomers Debate Whether Oldest Known Dust Disk Will Ever Form Planets

Cambridge, MA--Every rule has an exception. One rule in astronomy, supported
by considerable evidence, states that dust disks around newborn stars
disappear in a few million years. Most likely, they vanish because the
material has collected into full-sized planets. Astronomers have discovered
the first exception to this rule - a 25-million-year-old dust disk that
shows no evidence of planet formation.

"Finding this disk is as unexpected as locating a 200-year-old person," said
astronomer Lee Hartmann of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
(CfA), lead author on the paper announcing the find.

The discovery raises the puzzling question of why this disk has not formed
planets despite its advanced age. Most protoplanetary disks last only a few
million years, while the oldest previously known disks have ages of about 10
million years.

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/press/pr0525.html

• Previous message: LARRY KLAES: "SETI public: A Moving Cluster Distance to the Exoplanet 2M1207 B in the TW Hya Association"

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.6 : Wed Jul 20 2005 - 02:24:45 UTC