Close Encounters of the Planet-destroying Kind

Close Encounters of the Planet-destroying Kind

We know that a cluster can be a dangerous place for a young star trying to form some new planets. Radiation and winds from massive stars can evaporate the planetary disc, and the gravitational pull from fly-bys of other stars can disrupt the disc and drag the planet-forming material away.

Wreaking Havoc with a Stellar Fly-By

Wreaking Havoc with a Stellar Fly-By

You can’t model RW Aurigae as a single star with a disk of material around it, because there is a second star. And you can’t model it as a regular old binary system either, because there are interactions between the stars and the asymmetric disk. The authors of today’s paper create a comprehensive hydrodynamic model that considers many different observations of RW Aurigae.