{"id":610962,"date":"2024-06-17T17:12:05","date_gmt":"2024-06-17T21:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=610962"},"modified":"2024-06-17T17:15:32","modified_gmt":"2024-06-17T21:15:32","slug":"moon-planet-formation-streaming-instability-610962","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/moon-planet-formation-streaming-instability-610962\/","title":{"rendered":"In the hunt for a second Earth, look to small planets"},"content":{"rendered":"

The recommendation is based on new research from Rochester scientists about the role of streaming instability in forming moons and planets.<\/h2>\n

Scientists around the world are constantly on the hunt for planets outside our solar system that could potentially provide a habitable environment for life.<\/p>\n

Their telescopes, on the ground and in space, tend to focus on planets much larger than Earth, in part because they\u2019re easier to spot than smaller planets and, thus, more conducive to study.<\/p>\n

But new research<\/a> from the University of Rochester<\/a> published in Planetary Science Journal <\/em>suggests scientists ought to be on the lookout for planets that are not much larger than our own. A rocky planet with a large moon may have good potential to host life, given that our moon controls essential aspects for life, including the length of the day, ocean tides, and stable climate.<\/p>\n

\u201cRelatively small planets similar to the size of Earth are more difficult to observe and they have not been the major focus of the hunt for moons,\u201d says Miki Nakajima, an assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences<\/a> at Rochester and the lead author of the research. \u201cHowever, we predict these planets are actually better candidates to host moons.\u201d<\/p>\n

The details of the origin of the Earth\u2019s moon are a longstanding debate in planetary science.<\/p>\n

The prevailing theory is that the moon formed about 4.5 billion years ago when the Earth was hit by a planetary embryo the size of Mars. The collision threw into orbit a partially vaporized disk of debris that coalesced into the moon. Other models suggest that Earth collided with a much larger object, which would have produced a completely vaporized disk.<\/p>\n

There are nearly 300 moons in our solar system<\/a>, but their masses are typically much smaller relative to their host planets than our moon is to Earth\u2014and that matters when it comes to the formation of life. Moons can form by other processes, but these moons are typically small compared to the sizes of their planets. In contrast, a huge impact tends to generate a massive moon.<\/p>\n

While many scientists theorize that a moon isn\u2019t necessary for a planet to sustain life, they also acknowledge that our disproportionately large moon played a crucial role in the development of complex lifeforms on Earth.<\/p>\n

After all, it is the moon\u2019s gravitational tug that is largely responsible for the tidal flow of the oceans, which scientists believe enabled the formation of the nucleic acids that fostered life as we know it. And the moon stabilizes Earth\u2019s orbital tilt, which keeps the climate relatively predictable so organisms can more easily evolve and adapt.<\/p>\n

Scientists have detected more than 5,000 exoplanets\u2014planets beyond our solar system. But exomoons\u2014moons that orbit exoplanets\u2014are elusive because they are by nature so much smaller than the planets they orbit. To date, only a couple plausible candidates have been identified<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Niki
MOONSHOT:<\/strong> Miki Nakajima, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Rochester, studies planetary formation and evolution. (University of Rochester photo \/ J. Adam Fenster)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That may matter in the search for a second Earth, one that could offer an ideal environment for life\u2014and this is where the latest science conducted by Nakajima and her coauthors comes in.<\/p>\n

Building on previous research that relies on computer simulations of moon formations<\/a>, they investigated the role so-called \u201cstreaming instability\u201d plays in creating moons.<\/p>\n

Streaming instability is a process that concentrates particles in a vapor disk to rapidly form planetesimals and moonlets, the foundational building blocks of planets and moons, respectively.<\/p>\n

They found that while streaming instability can form self-gravitating moonlets in a vapor-rich disk generated by a giant collision of planets, those moonlets are not large enough to avoid strong drag from the vapor disk and being hurtled down to their host planet and destroyed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese moonlets could grow further once the disk cools enough and the vapor mass fraction of the disk becomes small,\u201d the report reads. \u201cHowever, by this time a significant amount of the disk mass is lost, and the remaining disk could make only a small moon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nakajima was assisted in her research by Rochester physics professor Alice Quillen<\/a>,\u00a0 former Rochester undergraduate student Jeremy Atkins, and Jacob Simon, an assistant professor at Iowa State University.<\/p>\n

Their study supposes that the moon-forming impact has to be relatively \u201cgentle.\u201d That would mean, in the case of our Earth, the object colliding with it could not be much bigger than Mars. Otherwise, the impact would generate a completely vaporized disk, and such a disk could have only formed a fractionally small moon.<\/p>\n

This work also suggests a major difference between planet and moon formation. Sometimes, moon-formation processes are viewed as analogous to the process of planet formation. This research suggests that streaming instability is a critical process for planet formation, but not for moon formation.<\/p>\n

The researchers conclude that streaming instability is not conducive to forming large moons from vapor-rich disks, and that fractionally large moons, like Earth\u2019s moon, stem from vapor-poor disks orbiting planets smaller than that of Earth.<\/p>\n

The Space Telescope Science Institute recently selected two proposals from researchers to use the powerful James Webb Space Telescope to look for exomoons<\/a>. One focuses on moons around a Jupiter-like planet, and the other looks for moons around Earth-like planets.<\/p>\n

These future observations can test the theory developed in this research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The recommendation is based on new research from Rochester scientists about the role of streaming instability in forming moons and planets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1262,"featured_media":610972,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[18852,18662,18572,16072],"class_list":["post-610962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sci-tech","tag-department-of-earth-and-environmental-sciences","tag-department-of-physics-and-astronomy","tag-research-finding","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIn the hunt for a second Earth, look to small planets<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The recommendation is based on University of Rochester research about the role of streaming instability in forming moons and planets.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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