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on Twitter Currently, astronomers have two competing models for
planetary formation. In one, the planets form in a single,
monolithic collapse. In the second, the core forms first and
then slowly accretes gas and dust. However, in both situations,
the process must be complete before the radiation pressure from
the star blows away the gas and dust. While this much is
certain, the exact time frames have remained another matter of
debate. It is expected that this amount should be somewhere in
the millions of years, but low end estimates place it at only a
few million, whereas upper limits have been around 10 million. A
new paper explores IC 348, a 2-3 million year old cluster with
many protostars with dense disks to determine just how much mass
is left to be made into planets. The presence of dusty disks is
frequently not directly observed in the visible portion of the
spectra. Instead, astronomers detect these disks from their
infrared signatures.