Mysterious Object From Beyond Solar System May Be "Seed" Traveling Galaxy and Creating New Planets, Paper Finds

Astronomers have been fascinated after spotting an object earlier this year that came from interstellar space as is now hurtling through our inner solar system.

Since then, they've been using powerful telescopes to study the mysterious object, trying to understand its unusual composition and exact origins. Most agree that it's probably a comet, albeit an unusual one, though at least one has posited that it could be a remnant of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization — a colorful claim, but one that NASA has disputed as a flight of fancy.

Regardless, it's an interesting visitor. In a paper presented at the Joint Meeting of the Europlanet Science Congress and the Division of Planetary Sciences last week in Germany, astrophysicist Susanne Pfalzner raised an intriguing possibility: objects like 3I/ATLAS could become the "seeds" of giant planets after being captured in the discs of dust and gas surrounding a young star.

"Interstellar objects may be able to jump-start planet formation, in particular around higher-mass stars," said Pfalzner in a statement.

It's an intriguing hypothesis that could potentially solve more than one mystery surrounding our understanding of how planets form over millions of years, and one that would make these lonely objects traveling vast distances far more influential than previously thought.

According to our current theory of planet formation, smaller particles lump together to form larger objects and eventually planet-sized bodies, a process known as accretion.

However, that doesn't explain why relatively large planets, such as gas giants, have been spotted orbiting young stars. Computer simulations have shown that accreted material tends to shatter and bounce off each other instead of lumping together.

As Pfalzner suggests, interstellar objects could potentially offer a solution to the conundrum. According to the researcher's models, the accretion disks and their gravitational pull around young stars could successfully capture millions of objects around the size of the first interstellar object ever spotted in 2017, called 'Oumuamua, which was about 330 feet in length.

"Interstellar space would deliver ready-made seeds for the formation of the next generation of planets," Pfalzner proposed.

The theory could explain why gas giants like Jupiter are incredibly rare in "M dwarf" star systems, which tend to be relatively cool and small.

These enormous bodies are far more common in the orbits of larger, Sun-like stars — which only keep their planet-forming disks for roughly two million years. That's extremely little time for gas giants to develop.

That's where interstellar objects like 3I/ATLAS come in: if there are enough of them cruising around out there, their extra mass could could give gas giants a significant head start.

"Higher-mass stars are more efficient in capturing interstellar objects in their discs," Pfalzner said. "Therefore, interstellar object-seeded planet formation should be more efficient around these stars, providing a fast way to form giant planets."

"And, their fast formation is exactly what we have observed," she added.

Pfalzner and her colleagues are now investigating how many captured interstellar objects could theoretically form into planetary bodies, and how they are distributed across the accretion disks of distant stars.

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