Scientists have learned how a new Earth can appear

Scientists have created a computer model for the formation of planets from gas and interstellar dust. She helped to understand what conditions are needed for solid rocky planets to form.

In recent years, astronomers have discovered several thousand exoplanets. Most of them turned out to be gas giants, but some of them were stony celestial bodies, 2-3 times larger than the Earth in size. For a long time scientists could not understand how the second type was being formed, and they believed that some exotic conditions were necessary for this.

But thanks to the gas-dust computer model of the formation of large objects, astrophysicists have finally managed to understand how this happens. In fact, the formation of planets and circumstellar dust does not begin hundreds of thousands of years after the birth of the star, but immediately. If the viscosity of matter in the circumstellar space is relatively low, then in a few tens of thousands of years a huge amount of boulders is formed. They have a chance to unite in the planets before the formed gas giants begin to “devastate” the star system.

If such earth-like planets are still formed, they will rotate fairly close to the star. This is quite consistent with the real facts and observations of exoplanets. The article about the study will be published in the journal Earth and Planetary Astrophysics.