Planets in the Early Universe
Yu. A. Shchekinov (1), M. Safonova (2), J. Murthy (2) ((1) Southern, Federal University, (2) Indian Institute of Astrophysics)

TL;DR
This paper proposes that planet formation could have occurred in the early Universe immediately after the first metal enrichment from Pop. III stars, challenging traditional theories and supported by recent discoveries around old metal-poor stars.
Contribution
It introduces a heuristic scenario explaining how planets could form in low-metallicity environments of the early Universe, based on dust and disk dynamics.
Findings
Planets have been discovered around old metal-poor stars.
Conditions for planet formation likely existed shortly after the first metal production.
Planet formation in low-metallicity environments is plausible due to disk dynamics and dust coagulation.
Abstract
Several planets have recently been discovered around old metal-poor stars, implying that these planets are also old, formed in the early Universe. The canonical theory suggests that the conditions for their formation could not have existed at such early epochs. In this paper we argue that the required conditions, such as sufficiently high dust-to-gas ratio, could in fact have existed in the early Universe immediately following the first episode of metal production in Pop. III stars, both in metal-enhanced and metal-deficient environments. Metal-rich regions may have existed in multiple isolated pockets of enriched and weakly-mixed gas close to the massive Pop. III stars. Observations of quasars at redshifts , and gamma-ray bursts at , show a very wide spread of metals in absorption from to . This suggests that physical conditions in…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
