The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has found evidence that two giant asteroids are colliding in a nearby galaxy. The colossal collision threw out 100,000 times more dust than the impact killed the dinosaurs.
The violent impact recently occurred in Beta Pictoris, a galaxy 63 light-years away in the constellation Pictoris.
Beta Pictoris is a baby compared to our own solar system; it has only existed for 20 million years, while our system is already 4.5 billion years old. It was first discovered in 1983 by NASA’s Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) spacecraft and is believed to have formed from the shock wave of a nearby supernova.
Although the young galaxy currently contains at least two gas giant planets, it has no rocky worlds like ours. But rocky inner planets may be forming, thanks to large dust-producing collisions like the one observed by JWST, the researchers behind the new findings said in a June 10 presentation at the 244th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Madison, Wisconsin.
Because it is still very young, the star system’s circumstellar debris disk – the enormous ring of gas and dust that surrounds the star – is a considerably more violent place than ours, making it the perfect place for astronomers to study the galaxies. tumultuous early years of planet-forming systems. The team added that their findings could provide a rare insight into the history of our own solar system.
“Beta Pictoris is at an age where planet formation in the terrestrial planetary zone is still ongoing through collisions with giant asteroids, so what we could be seeing here is essentially how rocky planets and other bodies are forming in real time,” says lead author of the paper research. Christine Chenan astronomer at Johns Hopkins University, said in a statement.
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To capture a snapshot of the distant asteroid crash, the astronomers trained JWST’s powerful eye on the system and found that giant masses of clumped silicate dust observed by the Spitzer Space Telescope between 2004 and 2005 had completely disappeared.
This means that a giant collision between two asteroids likely occurred about 20 years ago, pulverizing the bodies into large amounts of dust with particles smaller than pollen or powdered sugar, Chen said.
“With Webb’s new data, the best explanation we have is that we have in fact witnessed the aftermath of a rare, cataclysmic event between large asteroid-sized bodies, marking a complete change in our understanding of this star system ,” Chen said.
The researchers suggest that their findings will help astronomers better understand how the architecture of galaxies is built, and how often habitable systems like ours form.
“The question we are trying to contextualize is whether this entire process of terrestrial and giant planet formation is common or rare, and the even more fundamental question: are planetary systems like the Solar System that rare?” co-author Kadin Worthen, a doctoral student in astrophysics at Johns Hopkins University, said in the statement. “We’re actually trying to understand how weird or average we are.”