SYDNEY, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Australian astronomers have led a major international effort that has uncovered five newly forming planets, some of the youngest ever detected, through a revolutionary technique, Monash University said on Wednesday.
The innovative technique developed by researchers from Monash University, uses advanced imaging to uncover planets that were previously hidden within the gas and dust of young solar systems, said a press release of the Melbourne-based university published by Medianet on Wednesday.
Part of the global exoALMA project, the discovery was made using the powerful Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile. Unlike traditional methods that search for planets by detecting their light, exoALMA identifies the subtle disturbances planets create in surrounding gas and dust, said the release.
"It's like trying to spot a fish by looking for ripples in a pond, rather than trying to see the fish itself," said Monash astrophysicist Associate Professor Christophe Pinte, the project's primary investigator who developed the new technique over seven years.
The technique allows scientists to find planets just a few million years old, roughly 1,000 times younger than Earth, to gain insights into the early stages of planet formation, according to the findings published in 17 papers in a special edition of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, with more to follow.
Monash Professor Daniel Price, a co-developer of the technique, said the findings mark a major leap forward in understanding planetary origins.
"We have discovered more than 5,000 exoplanets to date, but they are all mature systems, leaving us with little understanding of how they formed or why they differ so drastically from our own solar system," Price said. ■
