Understanding how the planets have been formed would lead to knowing more about our solar system. The large planets in particular are of interest to astronomers, as they have a composition much different from the inner planets. Astronomers speculate how planets are formed by knowing more how Jupiter came to be.
Planets formed by the swirling of gases and dust from a young stellar system. This has been the case with the Sun early in its life. The process on how it worked has been speculated by astronomers. Through different simulations researchers from ETH Zurich as well as the Universities of Zurich and Bern have come up with a possible way on how planets such as Jupiter were formed.
Based on their simulations, the larger planets first had a core much larger than the Earth. The core had to be large enough in order to get the gases that would later mostly make up the giant planets, explained Judit Szulagyi, a postdoctoral graduate from fellow from the ETH Zurich. She is also a member of the Swiss NCCR PlanetS. This is one theory that explains how the planets were formed.
Another theory states the gaseous disk around the young star is large. As the gaseous disk spins, it begins to clumps with spiral arms begin to form inside this disk. These clumps then begin to collapse due to gravity, slowly taking in material towards them. This formation has been noted to be the same that stars have been formed.
The simulations have been run by Szulagyi together with Lucio Mayer, who is a Professor from the University of Zurich. The simulations have been run on the supercomputer at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS). Szulagyi explained that their simulations were run to their limits, which produced higher resolution simulations, according to the ETH Zurich site.
The two theories have different results based on the simulations. The first theory had the forming planets heat up to as much as several hundred Kelvins. In the second theory the gases around the forming planets were much colder. Mayer sees the second theory to explain more why there are disks around forming planets better, as Phys Org notes.
Through the simulation, it has been shown the role of temperature when planets are formed. In general the simulations show how planets are formed, and can be a good guide for other astronomers and researchers who are looking into protoplanetary systems. A young stellar system has also been observed to be forming multiple star systems earlier, as a report reveals.
