The thick dust rings surrounding a young Sun look nothing like the Sun we know today, which has prevented our planet from developing into a super-Earth.
A study led by Dr. André Izidoro from Rice University (Texas, USA) has created computer simulations from data about the early solar system to explain a question that has puzzled astronomers for a long time: Why do other star systems abound with super-Earths, while our Solar System does not?
Image of the young star HD163296, a recreation of the early Sun with its primordial rings – (Photo: ALMA/Andrea Isella/Rice University)
According to Live Science, the simulations recreate the phase when the Sun was newly formed from the remnants of a gas and dust cloud known as the “solar nebula”, depicting a young star surrounded by dust and gas rings similar to the “rings” of Saturn today, but much larger.
These rings originated from high-pressure dust and gas regions surrounding the newborn Sun, likely the result of particles moving towards the Sun, heating up and releasing a significant amount of vaporized gas. There are three distinct areas where solid particles vaporize into gas, referred to as “sublimation zones”, and each sublimation zone generates a strong gravitational pull.
In the region closest to the Sun – the hottest area – solid silicates turn into gas; in the middle zone, ice heats up and transforms into gas; and in the farthest region, carbon monoxide vaporizes into gas.
This gasification process involves a series of intense and intricate “collisions”, drawing dust together to form rings. Without these pressure collisions, our Sun would have been strong enough to pull in all particles, resulting in a lack of material for planet formation.
In other words, these three rings are the cradle of planets and many other objects. The innermost ring has formed the group of planets in the “inner Solar System” such as Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. The second ring created the remaining planets, while the outermost ring produced comets and asteroids in the Kuiper Belt.
The simulations indicate that this “ringed Sun” structure determined how the planets would be shaped. If the second ring had formed just a bit later, gas and dust would have been attracted too strongly to the inner ring, creating super-Earths instead of the small rocky planets we have today.
And if that had happened, we might be living on a super-Earth now, or perhaps we wouldn’t even exist.
