Researchers advise revising observational data on young planets, taking into account their possible non-spherical shape
Scientists have concluded that gas giants like Jupiter may have had a flattened shape at the beginning of their existence. This discovery was made by a team of astrophysicists who used a supercomputer to simulate the growth of such planets.
«We have been studying planet formation for a long time, but never before has it occurred to us to test the shape of planets as they form in simulations. We always assumed that they were spherical, — said University of Central Lancashire astrophysicist Dimitris Stamatellos, co-author of the new paper.
The understanding of planet formation is still incomplete, despite the fact that more than 5,500 planets have been discovered in the Milky Way. Current theories suggest that planets, comets and asteroids are formed from massive clouds of gas and dust around stars under the influence of gravity. This applies to small rocky planets like Earth and Mars.
However, for gas giants such as Jupiter, scientists believe that they formed as a result of «the splitting apart of large rotating protostellar disks around young stars in a short time» — a scenario known as «disk instability». According to this scenario, large planets form quickly at great distances from their star. The researchers conducted computer simulations that confirmed that the gas giants likely originally had a flattened shape due to centrifugal forces and the fact that material accumulated more at the planet's poles rather than at the equator.
The team advises that these results be taken into account in future observations of young planets. The shape of the observed object can change depending on the viewing angle, and this is important to remember, especially given the current ability to observe exoplanets at distances of many light years.