May 6 2001
From The Space Library
A research team led by John Bally of the University of Colorado and Henry Throop of the Southwest Research Institute announced that the team had used the HST to observe the first direct evidence of the snowballing theory of planet birth. According to the scholars’ findings, later released in Science, dust grains in the midst of a cloud of dust and gas located in the Orion Nebula, which is approximately 1,500 light-years from Earth, had accreted into a single nucleus of gas and dust, thereby forming an embryonic planet. The researchers observing the occurrence speculated that a similar process might have formed the known planets of the universe. In describing the volatile environment in which the snowballing process occurs, Throop used the analogy of “trying to build a skyscraper in the middle of a tornado.” The researchers surmised that, although snowballing may have caused many embryo planets to begin forming, the complete process of forming a full-fledged planet might have occurred more rarely than scientists previously had speculated. (Kathy Sawyer, “Astronomers Observe Forming of Infant Planet for First Time,” Houston Chronicle, 6 May 2001; Henry B. Throop et al., “Evidence for Dust Grain Growth in Young Circumstellar Disks,” Science 292, no. 5522 (1 June 2001): 16861689.)
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