What planetary collisions can reveal about how worlds form
· 1:41 · With Nora
Dust around young stars is giving astronomers clues about violent collisions between young worlds.
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- ScienceDailyNASA’s Webb finds signs of Mars-sized worlds smashing together | ScienceDaily
- RechercheAstronomers used NASA’s Webb and Spitzer space telescopes to study 21 extreme debris disks around young stars. These disks are surrounded by unusually large amounts of warm dust close to their stars.
- RechercheThe team grouped the disks by their silica content: eight were silica-rich and 13 were silica-poor. The researchers infer that the silica-rich disks are linked to high-energy collisions between Mars-sized bodies, while silica-poor disks point to less energetic impacts between Moon-sized bodies.