Baby Photos of Alien Earth Clicked by Scientists

According to new images snapped by Atacama Large Millimeter/Sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile reveals a planet-forming disk close to a sun-like star, TW Hydrae, which is positioned at the same distance as Earth from Sun.

"Previous studies with optical and radio telescopes confirm that this star hosts a prominent disk with features that strongly suggest planets are beginning to coalesce," study lead author Sean Andrews, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), said in a statement.

"The new ALMA images show the disk in unprecedented detail, revealing a series of concentric, dusty, bright rings and dark gaps, including intriguing features that suggest a planet with an Earth-like orbit is forming there," Andrews added.

The size of this newborn planet is still unknown, as it may grow as big as Earth. Speculation is that it may even end up developing into a world much bigger than our own, also known as super-Earth, but much smaller than ice-hulk, Uranus and Neptune, researchers claimed.

Only 10 million years old, TW Hydrae lies at a distance of 175 light-years from Earth. It has certainly caught the fancy of astronomers because of its proto-planetary disk facing Earth.

"TW Hydrae is quite special," study co-author David Wilner, also of the CfA, said in the same statement. "It is the nearest known protoplanetary disk to Earth, and it may closely resemble our solar system when it was only 10 million years old."

"This is the highest-spatial-resolution image ever of a protoplanetary disk from ALMA, and that won't be easily beat going forward," Andrews said.

According to these images, there is a gap of 20 and 40 AU from TW Hydrae. This distance is almost the same as the average distance at which Uranus and Pluto orbit from sun, respectively. These gaps are also indicative of spots where the planet formation takes place, says the researcher.

The new study has been published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.