Beta Pictoris Planets Life or What - 1642 Words

BETA PICTORIS: PLANETS? LIFE? OR WHAT? JARA ASTRONOMY 102 SEC 013 The ultimate question is; Is there a possibility that life might exist on a planet in the Beta Pictoris system? First, one must ask, Are there planets in the Beta Pictoris system?. However, that question would be impossible to answer if one did not answer the most basic questions first; Where do planets come from? and do the key elements and situations, needed to form planets, exist in the Beta Pictoris system?. To understand where planets come from, one has to first look at where the planets in our solar system came from. Does or did our star, the sun, have a circumstellar disk around it? the answer is believed to be yes. Scientists believe that a†¦show more content†¦The Hubble Space Telescope, using the high-resolution spectrograph, found that the disk surrounding beta Pictoris consists of two parts: an outer ring of small, solid particles, and an inner ring of diffuse gas within a few hundred miles of the star (5). Albert Boggess, an astronomer at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, suspects that the gas comes from the ring of solid particles (5). If he is correct, then the gas may be a sign that planets are being born there. The gas could be a result from the collision of solid particles in the outer ring accreting into planets that are still too small to see because of the brightness of the star itself (5). During the collisions some of the particles would be vaporized and drawn toward the star. The planets in our own solar system are believed to have formed through countless numbers of such collisions (5). Boggess also believes that Beta Pictoris is very similar to a very early phase of our own solar system (5). Additional evidence, from the Hubble, also suggests that Beta Pictoris might be following in our footsteps. The gaseous inner ring appears to contain clumps of material spiraling toward the star (5). These clumps may be comets, diverted from the normal paths by close calls with protoplanets (5). This also fits with curren t ideas about the evolution of our own solar system. Gases from comet impacts