Universe's Oldest Planet-Forming Disk Discovered

NASA and scientists identified a universe's oldest planet-forming disk, a massive disk of gas and dust encompassing a star known as a circumstellar disk. It is approximately 45 million years old and located in the Carina association, a large group of similar stars in the Carina Nebula that estimated to be about 212 light-years from the Sun.

Citizen scientists helped discover potential new hunting ground for planets outside our solar system: https://t.co/GlMQU0NhpV @DiskDetective pic.twitter.com/vN59C9OwBE

— NASA (@NASA) October 23, 2016

Steven Silverberg, the lead author of the study and an astronomer at the University of Oklahoma said that most of these disks fade away in less than 30 million years. He further said that this certain red dwarf is a candidate member of the Carina association, which would make it around 45 million years old. He added that the oldest planet-forming disk or red dwarf system with a disk they have seen is one of these associations.

The findings were published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. It was co-authored by eight citizen scientists, according to NASA. They researched thoroughly the disk candidates and the data they gathered led to the discovery of the new disk, which is the oldest planet-forming disk.

Marc Kuchner, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and leads the Disk Detective said that without the aid of the citizen scientists they could not spot the object. He further said that the WISE mission has identified 747 million objects, of which they expect a few thousand to be circumstellar disks.

The age of star could be difficult to determine. On the other hand, the Carina association is a group of stars that were all born at roughly the same time in the same stellar nursery. Jonathan Gagne, an astronomer explained that it is surprising to see a circumstellar disk around a star that may be 45 million years old. This is because they normally expect these disks to dispel in a few million years. He further explained that more observations will be needed to know whether the star is as old as they think. If this will turn out to be then it will become a standard system to comprehend the lifetime of disks, as noted by Phys.org.