A ring of dust near the star Epsilon Iridani suggests the existence of a solar system similar to ours
A ring of dust particles observed around a star outside the solar system, a ring remarkably similar to the belt of comets beyond Pluto and Neptune, raises among researchers the hypothesis that solar systems similar to ours may exist. Although there is still no direct evidence for the presence of planets in the observed system, astronomers have discovered a bright spot in the dusty ring around Epsilon Iridani, one of the ten closest stars to Earth.
The spot may be dust that has been drawn into the magnetic field of a young planet, said researcher Jane Greaves, a scientist at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hilo, Hawaii. The observations were made using the James Clerk Maxwell telescope. Another reason for the great interest caused by the dust ring is the fact that the distance between it and the star is the same as the distance of the Kuiper belt from our solar system. The Kuiper Belt contains about 70 large comets and millions of smaller comets.
The researchers believe that observing the Epsilon Iridian system is like looking into the past of our solar system. "It's almost like watching the formation of the solar system through a time machine," Greaves said. Benjamin Zuckerman - a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California and a member of the research team - described the image as "a photograph of our solar system as it may have looked four billion years ago". According to him, astronomers have already found other systems that have planets, "but they are not similar to our solar system". Greaves presented the results of the observations about a week ago at the Protostar and Planets conference in Santa Barbara, California.
It seems that the system is at the stage where our system - which was 4.5 billion years old - was found when it was 600 million years old. The researchers agree that the system around Epsilon Eridrani, whose estimated age is 500 million to one billion years, is too young for even primitive life to develop in it.
"But in a few billion years, who knows," said Martin Duncan, an astrophysicist at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. "The results may imply that systems of planets are quite common in the galaxy."
In April of this year, the research team in Hawaii reported similar dust disks near three very hot stars - Pomelhout, Vega and Beta Pictoris - indicating that planets are forming around them. When planets form, they suck up dust and gas nearby like giant vacuum cleaners, cleaning up entire regions as they leave celestial bagel holes.
Epsilon Iridani, which is relatively close to us (at a distance of 10 light years), resembles the sun much more than the three stars believed to be the centers of other planetary systems. The star, which is almost the size of the Sun, can be seen with the naked eye in the constellation Iridanus.
