Orion Death Stars Destroy Planets Before They Even Form

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have now confirmed Orion death stars destroy planets before they even get the chance to form, according to a study published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Astronomers from the U.S. and Canada analyzed and documented the violent relationship between O-type stars and protostars in the Orion Nebula.

"O-type stars, which are really monsters compared to our Sun, emit tremendous amounts of ultraviolet radiation and this can play havoc during the development of young planetary systems," said National Research Council of Canada astronomer Rita Mann, according to National Radio Astronomy Observatory press release. "Using ALMA, we looked at dozens of embryonic stars with planet-forming potential and, for the first time, found clear indications where protoplanetary disks simply vanished under the intense glow of a neighboring massive star."

The Orion Nebula is home to hundreds of protostars called proplyds. Many of these will eventually develop planets, but others will have their planet forming dust and gas clouds stripped away by violent radiation from O-Type stars.

The study revealed that protostars within 0.1 light-years, or 600 billion miles, of a 0-type star are in danger of having their cocoons of dust and gas stripped away in "only" a few million years, which is a lot faster than planets are able to form, according to the study.

"Massive stars are hot and hundreds of times more luminous than our Sun. Their energetic photons can quickly deplete a nearby protoplanetary disk by heating up its gas, breaking it up, and sweeping it away," said the National Research Council of Canada's James Di Francesco, according to the release.

Astronomers have previously accessed the Hubble Space Telescope to capture images of proplyds in Orion.

By combining images from Hubble and ALMA with images from the Submillimeter Array (SMA) in Hawaii, researchers determined that any protostar inside the extreme-UV envelope of a massive star would have most of its material destroyed.

 "Taken together, our investigations with ALMA suggest that extreme UV regions are not just inhospitable, but they're downright hazardous for planet formation," said Mann. "With enough distance, however, it's possible to find a much more congenial environment. This work is really the tip of the iceberg of what will come out of ALMA; we hope to eventually learn how common solar systems like our own are."