http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1300000/1300332.stm
By BBC News Online science editor Dr David Whitehouse
Astronomers say that a game of planetary survival is taking place inside a
gigantic cloud of gas and dust 1,500 light-years from Earth.
It could mean that planets may be rarer in the Galaxy than previously
thought.
The dramatic events are taking place in the Orion Nebula - the nearest, large
stellar nursery to Earth.
The observations suggest that any fledgling planets must try to form quickly,
or they will be destroyed by a flood of radiation from the nebula's brightest
star.
Planets around young stars may have to form quickly....
In research published in Science magazine, John Bally of the University of
Colorado in Boulder, US, and Henry Throop of the Southwest Research
Institute, also in Boulder, used Hubble to see if planets were beginning to
grow in million-year-old dusty discs that surround young stars in Orion.
First steps
"This is the first time that large-growing dust grains, which range in size
from smoke particles to sand grains, have been seen in visible light in these
protoplanetary discs," Throop said.
"The dust we're seeing in the Hubble observations is large, completely unlike
dust that we've seen in young star-forming regions like this before. We're
seeing the very first stages of planetary formation happening before our
eyes."
..or else they could be destroyed.
"We have two things happening in these systems: dust grains are beginning to
stick together as a first step towards making planets, but then bright stars
are trying to tear everything apart. Which one wins is really a big question.
It's like trying to build a skyscraper in the middle of a tornado."
The astronomers deduced the dust size from the way the discs allow light to
pass through them. The fine dust normally seen in space scatters blue light
but allows red light to pass through. The Sun appears red at sunset because
atmospheric dust influences light in the same way as space dust.
The dust discs in Orion appear grey because they allow all colours of light
to pass through. This is because the dust is much larger than interstellar
dust.
Radio observations also provide tantalising hints that much of the material
in the disc may range in size from snowflakes to gravel.
Hostile environment
The Hubble observations show that it may be easy to start building planets.
According to conventional theory, the grains will clump under gravity, until
they become the size of planets.
Astronomers suggest that nurturing planets to maturity may be a dicey drama
repeatedly playing out deep inside star-forming clouds scattered across our
Galaxy.
Because of Orion's hostile environment, typical of star-forming regions,
"we're also seeing that planet formation is a hazardous process," Bally says.
The outcome could have far-reaching implications for the number of planets in
our Galaxy.
Depending on whether planets can form quickly or not, it could mean that
planets may be rarer in the Galaxy than previously thought.
Astronomers point out this is consistent with extra-solar planet discoveries
so far. They show that about 5% of the stars in our solar neighbourhood have
Jupiter-sized planets in small orbits.
If giant planets like Jupiter could collapse quickly out of the gas disc,
they might survive, according to a theory proposed by Alan Boss of Carnegie
Institutions, Washington.
"Only time will tell. If we find lots of 'Jupiters' around other stars, then
it means they will have managed to grow rapidly in Orion-type environments,"
Boss says.
Throop agrees: "It looks like 'Jupiters' must be formed either rarely or
rapidly. It's a good bet that planetary systems in Orion will look nothing
like our own Solar System. Although they may have rocky planets like Earth
and Mars, it looks hard to form either giant
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