Humans are living on a super-Earth without a 'Ring Sun'?

Dense rings of dust around a Sun that look nothing like the Sun today have prevented our planet from evolving into a super-Earth.

Dense rings of dust around a Sun that look nothing like the Sun today have prevented our planet from evolving into a super-Earth.

Research led by Dr. André Izidoro from Rice University (Texas, USA) created computer simulations from data about the early solar system to answer a question that has puzzled astronomers for a long time: other star systems are full of super-Earths, why is our Solar System not?

Picture 1 of Humans are living on a super-Earth without a 'Ring Sun'?

Image of the young star HD163296, a rendering of the early ringed Sun

According to Live Science, simulations of the new Sun's formation from the ashes of a cloud of gas and dust known as the "Solar nebula" show a young star with rings of gas and dust. surrounded like the "rings" of Saturn today, but much larger.

These rings originate from regions of high-pressure dust and gas surrounding the infant Sun, likely the result of particles on their way toward the Sun that have heated up and released large amounts of gasification a little bit. There are 3 distinct areas where solid particles vaporize into gas called "sublimation lines", and each of these sublimation lines generates a strong attraction on its own.

In the region closest to the Sun - the hottest region - solid silicate turns into gas; in mid lane the ice heats up and turns into gas; At the farthest point, carbon monoxide is converted to a gas.

This gasification process is a series of fierce and delicate "collisions", which attract dust to gather and form rings. If it weren't for these pressure collisions, our Sun would be strong enough to suck up all the particles, and as a result, there would be no material left for planets to grow.

In other words, these 3 rings are the cradles of planets and many other objects. The innermost ring has turned into a group of planets in the "Inner Solar System" such as Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. The second ring makes up the remaining planets. While the outermost ring produces comets and asteroids in the Kuiper Belt region.

Simulations show that it is this "ringed sun" structure that determines how the planets will be shaped. With just a little delay in the second ring's formation, gas and dust would be too strongly attracted to the inner ring and create super-Earths, instead of tiny rocky planets like ours today.

And if that happens, maybe we humans now live on a super-Earth, or maybe not at all.

Update 11 January 2022
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