Astrophysicists at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) discovered that planets are not formed in a spherical shapebut they do so in a flattened or “flattened” way.
The research published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters Journalshows that “protoplanets”, which are very young planets recently formed around stars, They are flattened structures called “oblate spheroids.”
With this approach, the team investigated the shapes of young planets and how they can grow to become large gaseous planets that can measure larger than Jupiter.
The professor of astrophysics at UCLan and co-investigator, Dimitris Stamatellos, assured that in research, it had always been assumed that The planets were completely spherical.
“We have been studying planet formation for a long time, but we had never before thought about checking the shape of planets as they form in simulations. We had always assumed they were spherical. “We were very surprised that they turned out to be oblate spheroids,” she said.
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These findings, the scientists say, are important “for understanding the mechanism of planet formation, so they are following up this discovery with models to examine how the shape of these planets is affected by the environment in which they form. and to determine its chemical composition for comparison with future observations from the James Webb Space Telescope.”