Bob Yirka is a research scientist at Phys.org.
A team of researchers from the University of Texas at Austin, the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics have found evidence of ripe conditions for planet formation.
The group described their observations in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The work by the team on this new effort came on the heels of work done by another team that discovered a pair of early stars. The researchers took a closer look at the environment in which the two stars exist.
There are two stars in a dense cloud of dust. Around a center of gravity, they are as well. The researchers found that A1 and A2 are very close together. At least three hot spots have been identified as a result of the two stars stirring up the dust around them.
The hot spots are thought to be caused by shock waves sent into the dust cloud as A1 and A2 pull in some material to help them grow. They note that shock waves lead to compression of dust and gases. It can lead to squeezing the molecule tighter together, which can lead to the creation of more complex molecule. Rocks can be formed when they combine with the dust around them. Planets will form around the stars as they grow.
Some of the molecules in the hot spots have already formed into isocyanic acid, which is itself made up of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen.
There are Dust Hot Spots at 10 Au Scales around the Class 0 Binary IRAS 16293–2422 A: A Departure from the Passive Irradiation Model. There is a document titled "10847/2041-8213/aca53a".
Journal information: Astrophysical Journal Letters
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