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New Era Dawns in Search for Other Worlds
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 07:00 am ET
23 January 2002
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Ray Jayx knows about dust
WASHINGTON D.C. - At a meeting of the American Astronomical Society earlier this month, the Hilton and Towers hotel was loaded with more dust than a second-hand bookstore owner sees in a lifetime. It permeated the aisles of a conference hall where hundreds of posters presented fresh views of the universe, worked its way into rooms where researchers discussed their findings. Far from obscuring the gathering, astronomers announced they had peered through the dust to get the best view ever of the center of our galaxy. Mapped it to reveal the collision of stellar winds. More significant, they used mere dust grains to gain tantalizing new insights into the earliest stages of planet formation. A new era has dawned in the search for other worlds. Using huge telescopes like the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, along with new techniques, researchers are examining disks of material around very young stars, hunting for infant planets that would prove other solar systems like ours are possible other places that could harbor life when they mature. "We're just now really starting to be able to trace the birth of planets, and to do it in detail," says Ray Jayawardhana of the University of California at Berkeley. Early news While dust thwarts optical astronomy, it can be revealing when studied in infrared and radio wavelengths. Jayawardhana and other scientists are racing each other to exploit this fact. The prize: claim to the first picture of a planet around another star. It could come within two years, Jayawardhana says. Other dust-fed findings should soon reveal secrets of solar system formation, likely demonstrating a range of ways and ends that will render our nine-planet system common. Among the discoveries that emerged at the AAS meeting: - Two giant clumps of dust and gas, spotted at different times around the star Vega, could be a developing large planet seen at two points in its orbit. Dust clumps are easier to detect than fully formed planets, said researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, led by David Wilner.
- Apparent knots of dust eclipsed the light from a star called SU Aurigae for several days at a time. They are thought by Villanova University researchers to be the seeds of planets, called protoplanets.
- A belt of dust very near a star known as HD 113766A could harbor a developing Earth-like planet. "The observations suggest the emergence of a planetary system not unlike our own," said Michael Meyer of the University of Arizona.
The study of dust disks is not new, but it appears to be on the threshold of something big. Next page: Behind the veil and the recipe for a planet
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