“It’s the first time ever we’ve really been able to look at how solar-size stars form in an environment akin to the early universe.”
Rocky planets might have been forming since the beginning of the universe. A stellar nursery in a neighboring galaxyThe overall chemical makeup of the tiny galaxy, called the Small Magellanic Cloud, is akin to that of the early universe. The finding suggests that rocky planets might have been able to develop in the relatively pristine chemical environment that pervaded the cosmos just a couple billion years after the Big Bang.
Because of the lack of these elements, astronomers have been unsure if rocky planets are able to form in the Small Magellanic Cloud. And previous telescopes did not have the ability to really probe young stars with a mass less than or equal to that of the sun, so astronomers couldn’t measure the star systems’ dust content, which is needed to infer if planets could be being born.
“One of the things we would love to understand better is how the environmental context impacts star formation and then, later on, the planet-forming populations around those young, forming stars,” says Michael Meyer, an astronomer at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor who was not involved in the research.
The low-metal stellar environment in the Small Magellanic Cloud is comparable to that of faraway galaxies that were developing around 11 billion years ago. During this time, a period called “cosmic noon,” there was a surge of star formation throughout the cosmos. If rocky planets could be accreting around stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, the researchers suggest, such worlds could have been forming in the early years of the universe as well.
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