The circumstances leading to the creation of the Earth’s solar system are more common throughout the galaxy than previously thought, a team of astrophysicists led by Victoria’s Rita Mann has discovered.
“Prior to our work, we felt the Earth was very unique in that our sun formed very close to a massive star,” Mann said.
These massive stars, sometimes called death stars, can burn up developing planetary systems.
“What our work is finding … is it is quite common for other solar systems to form close to these massive stars, and this greatly increases the likelihood that there are other solar systems like ours in the galaxy,” Mann said.
Mann, 32, was the lead writer of an article on the research that was published in the Astrophysical Journal.
The research focused on how planets form, which has been a focus for Mann through her studies at the University of Victoria, the University of Hawaii and now at the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Saanich.
Her work is done using a submillimetre telescope that operates at long wavelengths to look at disks where planets form. The disks are invisible to the eye but are very bright when viewed with submillimetre telescopes such as at the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility in Chile.
These disks burn up within a tenth of a light year (or 600 billion miles) from the death stars, “destroyed by the massive star’s radiation,” Mann said.
But beyond that distance, conditions are ripe for the formation of solar systems like our own, Mann found.
“The overall potential for planet formation is high in our galaxy,” she said.
Astronomers believe that massive, short-lived stars in interstellar clouds are key to star formation. At the end of their lives, massive stars explode as supernovas, seeding the area with elements that get taken up in the next generation of stars.
Mann, who was born and raised in Victoria, said she’s thrilled to be involved in such meaningful research.
“It’s unreal — we do this work because we’re so interested in these questions,” Mann said.
“I’m really lucky because I’ve come at a time when we can answer these fundamental questions that astronomers have had ever since the first telescopes were pointed to the stars.
“In our lifetime, we’re going to know just how common Earth-like planets are.”
