A team of astronomers led by University of Arizona researchers used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to study protoplanetary disks, gaining detailed insights into the forces that shape these structures. These disks are swirling masses of gas and dust from which planets form, and the team’s observations offer a glimpse into what our solar system may have looked like billions of years ago. The researchers were able to trace disk winds in unprecedented detail, streams of gas powered by magnetic fields that flow out from the planet-forming disk. These winds play a crucial role in how young planetary systems form and evolve.
Accretion, the process of a star consuming matter from its surrounding disk, is a key process at work in protoplanetary disks. The manner in which a star accretes mass influences the evolution of the surrounding disk and the formation of planets later on. The researchers believe that winds driven by magnetic fields across the disk’s surface could play a significant role in this process. By understanding how young stars grow by pulling gas from the surrounding disk, researchers can gain insight into how gas sheds angular momentum, allowing it to fall onto the star and contribute to its growth.
Astrophysicists have struggled to understand how gas across a protoplanetary disk sheds angular momentum to enable accretion. Disk winds have emerged as important players in this process, funneling gas away from the disk surface, thereby facilitating the inward movement of gas and enabling stars to grow. Distinguishing between different phenomena at work in protoplanetary disks is crucial, as various processes shape these structures. The researchers used the James Webb Space Telescope to observe winds in protoplanetary disks and gather evidence suggesting that these winds remove angular momentum, helping to solve long-standing questions about how stars and planetary systems form.
The team observed four protoplanetary disk systems that appear edge-on from Earth, allowing the dust and gas in the disks to mask the central star’s light and reveal the winds. By focusing on distinct molecules in various states of transition, the astronomers were able to trace different layers of the winds, revealing a three-dimensional structure with a central jet surrounded by a cone-shaped envelope of winds. A key finding was the consistent detection of a central hole inside the cones created by molecular winds in each of the four disks. Moving forward, the researchers aim to expand their observations to more protoplanetary disks to understand the prevalence of the observed disk wind structures and how they evolve over time as stars assemble and planets form.
In conclusion, the use of the James Webb Space Telescope has provided critical insights into the forces at work in protoplanetary disks, shedding light on the processes that shape these structures and influence the formation of planets. By studying disk winds in unprecedented detail, researchers have gained a better understanding of how angular momentum is shed in protoplanetary disks, allowing for accretion to occur. The observations made by the team of astronomers led by University of Arizona researchers offer valuable information about the early stages of planetary system formation and may help solve long-standing questions in the field of astrophysics.