An international team of researchers from the European Space Agency, NASA and the US National Science Foundation, using the James Webb Telescope, has shown that planet-forming disks existed in the early Universe for much longer than previously thought.
As Day.Az reports, the work was published in the Astrophysical Journal (AJ).
Scientists have turned their attention to the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy located near the Milky Way. In the star cluster NGC 346, they found that young stars, despite lacking heavy elements, are still surrounded by planet-forming disks even in the later stages of their lives – between 20 and 30 million years old. This is much longer than expected: according to previous models, such disks should disappear within two to three million years.
The results of the study confirm the need to revise models of planet formation in the early Universe. The longevity of the disks around these stars suggests that the planets may have had more time to grow and evolve.
Scientists suggest two possible reasons: either in environments with low abundances of heavy elements, stars retain their disks longer, or they initially formed from larger clouds of gas, which ensured the presence of more massive and stable disks.