A recent study suggests that newly formed planets have a similar shape to Smarties candies rather than being perfectly spherical.

According to scientists, newly formed planets around stars have a flattened shape, similar to Smarties, instead of the previously believed spherical shape.

Scientists at UCLan utilized computer simulations to simulate the creation of planets.

The team utilized a concept from astrophysics called the theory of disk instability. This theory suggests that planets can form quickly when dense gas and dust disperse from large rotating disks around young stars.

According to the study, this is the initial instance in which researchers have examined the formation of newborn planets in simulations and analyzed their shape.

Dr. Dimitris Stamatellos, a professor of astrophysics at UCLan, explained that these newly formed planets have a spherical shape with flattened poles and a bulging equator.

He stated that they have researched planet formation for a considerable amount of time, but they had never considered examining the shape of the planets as they develop in simulations.

We had previously believed they were round.

We were quite taken aback by the fact that they ended up being oblate spheroids, which are remarkably similar to Smarties candies!

From a technical standpoint, there is no planet that can be considered completely spherical.

According to Dr Stamatellos, Jupiter has a flattening of approximately 6%, while Saturn has a flattening of 10% and Earth is nearly spherical with a flattening of only 0.3%.

He stated that less mature planets, on the contrary, have a flatter shape, approximately 90%.

The research team examined the forms of juvenile planets and their development into gas giants similar to Jupiter. Their findings were published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters.

The researchers also found that newly formed planets increase in size as matter descends onto them, primarily from their polar regions rather than their equatorial regions.

According to them, the results have significant consequences, especially when observing planets with a telescope, as their appearances will change depending on the angle of observation.

According to the researchers, verification through observation of the Smarties-like appearance of juvenile planets could potentially provide insight into the process of their formation.

There are two explanations for how planets are formed. The most commonly accepted one is the core accretion model, which proposes that dust particles slowly accumulate and bond to create larger planets over a significant period of time.

While this explanation effectively describes the creation of planets like Earth, it does not completely explain the existence of gas giants, which are significantly larger than Jupiter. This is because the process would require too much time to occur.

The second hypothesis, known as disk instability, is not as widely accepted but could explain the formation of larger planets in a shorter amount of time.

The study suggests that the disc instability theory is more applicable than the core accretion theory.

Dr Adam Fenton, a recently graduated PhD student at UCLan’s Jeremiah Horrocks Institute for Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy, who led the research, said: “Many exoplanets, which are planets that orbit stars in other solar systems outside of our own, have been discovered in the last three decades.

Although many thousands of them have been observed, their formation remains a mystery.

One theory suggests that these objects are created over time through the gradual accumulation of dust particles, while another theory proposes that they are formed quickly by the fragmentation of spinning discs surrounding young stars. This latter theory is known as disk instability.

This hypothesis is attractive because it suggests that massive planets can develop rapidly at far distances from their parent star, potentially explaining certain observations of exoplanets.

Source: independent.co.uk