How Do Planet Factories Churn Out Super-Earths?

A new study by Caltech’s Konstantin Batygin and his colleague theorizes how super-Earths are formed.   Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)

Transcript

00:00 Scientists have a new theory to explain a strange consistency seen in planetary systems around other stars.

00:08 Astronomers have found that many stars prefer their inner rocky planets to be all of similar sizes, but that size varies from system to system.

00:18 This pattern can be explained if young stars develop narrow planet factory rings.

00:24 Small objects in the ring would tend to clump together forming a planet in a few million years.

00:30 Gravitational interactions with the gas in the disk would shift the planet into an orbit closer to its star.

00:37 This makes room for more planets to form one after another while the ring persists.

00:43 The structure of a star's ring would determine the typical size of the planets in that system.

00:49 Sparser rings would tend to form smaller worlds while denser rings would make super-Earths.

00:56 A ring should form just beyond the point where the star's heat vaporizes rocky materials.

01:03 This theory is based on a similar concept proposed to explain the formation of the moons around the outer planets in our own solar system.

01:12 [Music]