Scientists have always undertaken the study of binary systems to understand how planets are born in them. In yet another case, a study put together over thirty years suggested the possibility of a binary star giving birth to a planetary system in the future. Read on to understand what the scientists’ findings claim.
One article published under “The Astrophysical Journal” reported a study on the binary system cataloged as SVS 13, consisting of two protostars surrounded by disks of materials that could lead to the formation of planets. The team of researchers used 30 years of observations with the Very Large Array (VLA) and new observations with the Atacama Large Submillimeter/Millimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope to get a detailed picture of the situation.
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The conclusion is that each of the two protostars has its own circumstellar disk and that there is a third circumbinary disk orbiting both stars. The analysis of the data also led to the identification of nearly 30 molecules in the SVS 13 system, including 13 complex organic molecules that are precursors to life.
More about SV 13
The SVS 13 system, located in the Perseus molecular cloud about 980 light-years away from Earth, has been the subject of several studies over the years and often the subject of discussions about its age. Other astronomers who studied SV-13 confirmed that it is in an embryonic stage, while others placed it in a later stage of its evolution. It was also part of the multi-protostar group of systems.