Scientists have discovered a giant factory of planets beyond the orbit of Jupiter

The dust ring beyond Jupiter's orbit served as the main site for the formation of planetary embryos in the early Solar System. Experts from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany have found out that this region has been producing building blocks for future celestial bodies — planetesimals - for millions of years. This was reported on May 26 by Science Daily magazine.

Using computer simulations, the team of scientists determined that an area with high gas pressure, created by the gravity of the forming Jupiter, worked as a dust trap. Over the course of about 2 million years, material accumulated in this zone, from which objects with different chemical compositions were formed.

According to the models, Jupiter blocked the movement of large and durable particles more effectively than small dust grains. Over time, this led to a change in the composition of the available material in the "trap", which provoked the birth of several generations of cosmic bodies. In the first 500 thousand years, the proportion of brittle material decreased, and then increased again over a million years, creating clearly distinguishable populations of objects.

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According to cosmochemist Torsten Kleine, for the first time, researchers have been able to accurately reproduce the results of laboratory studies of meteorites using computer simulations of the early Solar system. Meteorites, he claims, serve as a kind of touchstone for theories of planet formation.

The researchers compared the simulation data with known groups of carbonaceous chondrites, carbon—rich meteorites found on Earth. It turned out that the characteristics of the simulated objects fully correspond to the composition of the six groups of chondrites that scientists are studying in laboratories.

According to the authors of the study, dust traps were the preferred birthplace of most planetesimals in the Solar System, and other types of meteorites could have formed in the same region at even earlier stages of cosmic history.

The Magazine Phys.org On May 21, he reported the discovery of the exoplanet TOI-199b, whose atmosphere is rich in methane. Astronomers have studied the space object and found out that it is a gas giant, the size of which is comparable to Saturn, and the temperature is similar to Earth.