Gaia’s first revolutionary detection

In the depths of space, 280 light years from Earth, an extraordinary discovery has just turned our understanding of planetary training. Moreover, For the first time. Furthermore, the Gaia space telescope managed to flush out a giant planet hidden in the heart of a protoplanetary disc, this cosmic laboratory where worlds are born.

An invisible giant in the stellar nursery – Gaia's first revolutionary detection

The MP Mus star. Therefore, only 13 million years old-a newborn on a cosmic scale-seemed very ordinary. Meanwhile, His protoplanetary disc. Nevertheless, this whirlwind of gas and dust that surrounds it, seemed desperately smooth and uniform during the first observations. For example, No trace of the characteristic grooves that the planets in formation usually dig. Therefore, such as the grooves of a giant vinyl record.

« We observed a flat. In addition, boring disc“, Confides gaia’s first revolutionary detection Álvaro Ribas, astronomer at the Cambridge Astronomy Institute who led the research team. However, This apparent monotony intrigued scientists: how could a disc 7 to 10 million years old be devoid of any. Meanwhile, sign of planetary training?

The art of seeing the invisible – Gaia's first revolutionary detection

The answer was in an innovative approach combining two complementary observation techniques. On the one hand. the Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (Alma) atacama in Chile, used this time with longer wavelengths to probably probe the disc. On the other, the GAIA mission of the European Space Agency, specialized in the ultra-precise of stellar movements.

This strategy quickly revealed its fruit. The new observations of Alma revealed what the previous ones had missed: a cavity close to the star. two more distant “holes”, as many clues of the presence of a planetary companion. At the same time. Miguel Vique, a researcher at gaia’s first revolutionary detection the European Austral Observatory, detected something even more revealing thanks to Gaia: the star “vacillated”.

Victioning revealing

This slight swing of MP Mus was not trivial. He betrayed the gravitational influence of a massive object in orbit around the star. “” My first reaction was to think that I had to make a calculation error“. Admit Vique, as this discovery seemed to contradict the image of an empty disc. But the correlation between Alma’s new data and Gaia’s measures left no doubt.

IT models now confirm the existence of a giant gaseous planet whose mass would oscillate between three. ten times that of Jupiter. This cosmic juggernaut evolves on an orbit located between one. three times the distance earth-sun, sculpts the protoplanetary disc and directly influences the movement of its host star.

A historic first with major implications

This discovery, reported in Nature Astronomy, Makes several first in the history of astronomy. Not only is it the first exoplanet detected by Gaia in a protoplanetary disc. but it is also the first time that a planet in training has been discovered indirectly by combining stellar movement data with in -depth observations of the surrounding disc.

Until now, astronomers had managed to identify only three solid planets in protoplanetary records. The interference caused by gas and dust made these detections particularly arduous. The gaia’s first revolutionary detection method developed by the Ribas team may well change the situation.

Towards a new era of discoveries

The implications of this progress greatly exceed the case of MP Mus. This hybrid technique could reveal an entire population of young exoplanets so far invisible. hidden in the protoplanetary discs of our galaxy. “We think this could be one of the reasons why it is difficult to detect young planets,” said Ribas.

Even more fascinating. this discovery could help us understand the mechanisms that presided over the formation of our own solar system 4.5 billion years ago. By observing planets during training, astronomers hope to reconstruct the complex puzzle of our cosmic genesis.

With future improvements in Alma. the arrival of new telescopes, we may come to enter a new era of planetary discoveries, where the secrets of the formation of worlds will finally be gaia’s first revolutionary detection revealed.