James Webb Space Telescope detects clues about how Earth formed billions of years ago

The James Webb Space Telescope has spied planet-forming disks letting off a cold"steam," providing crucial evidence for a leading theory describing how planets are built.that are just 2 million to 3 million years old — which is incredibly young in the scope of our universe's timeline. The disks are located in theAstronomers believe planets form through a process that begins with what is termed"pebble accretion.

The JWST observed four planet-forming disks in total — two disks that are quite compact, and two that are extended and haven’t experienced as much inward migration. Water vapor was only found in the two compact disks.in Chile. How these rings form is still debated, but one theory is that when migrating pebbles encounter a region of higher pressure, their inward drift slows. That slowing is thought to contain the pebbles within these sorts of pressure traps, forcing them to manifest as rings.

"In the past, we had this very static picture of planet formation, almost like there were these isolated zones that planets formed out of," Colette Salyk of Vassar College in New York, who is a co-author on the paper describing the JWST results, said in the statement."Now we actually have evidence that these zones can interact with each other."

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James Webb Space Telescope watches infant galaxies bringing light to the early universeRobert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.
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