Updated November 27th, 2019 at 16:31 IST

Scientists: Thousands of planets could be orbiting around black holes

According to a recent study, the scientists proposed the possibility of thousands of planets orbiting a supermassive black hole debunking the previous theory.

Reported by: Pragya Puri
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According to the universally accepted theory of science, it is accepted that planets only revolve around stars like the Sun. However, according to a recent study, the theoreticians proposed another possibility of thousands of planets orbiting a supermassive black hole. 

Planets revolving around black holes

Keiichi Wada, a professor at Kagoshima University, said that the formations of planets are possible even in harsh environmental conditions around a black hole if they are provided with the right conditions. Wada has been performing several experiments and researching galactic nuclei which are luminous objects responsible for supplying energy to the black holes. 

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In recent research, scientists found heavy dust aggregates around supermassive black holes in the nuclei of galaxies forming a disk-like structure. This theory debunks the previous theory according to which a planet formation was only possible if dust aggregates around young stars.  Eiichiro Kokubo, a professor at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan has been studying the formation of planets. According to his analysis, the calculations reveal that tens of thousands of planets with 10 times the mass of the Earth could be formed around 10 light-years from a black hole. This might pave the way to the unimaginable scale of planetary systems orbiting the black holes. 

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According to the research, a supermassive black hole is capable of attaching massive aggregates of dust forming dense disk which sometimes accounts for 100,000 times the mass of the sun. Moreover, the dust disk surrounding the black is so intense that it leads to the formation of the low-temperature region and block the radiations emitted by the central region. The low-temperature region in a protoplanetary disk is formed with a combination of dust grains and ice mantle. However, the technology has not become so advanced to detect the planet formation around the black holes. But the results have led to new possibilities in the field of astronomy. 

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Published November 27th, 2019 at 14:50 IST