Major contention has been scripted by a new study over the formation of cosmic rings around stars. This study reveals that sharp rings of dust around stars can even form on their own and need not necessarily be planets. This would drive analysts to argue over, the years old belief, exoplanet formation too.

The discs of dust and gas debris surrounding stars occasionally produce sharply defined or elongated rings. These were believed to be the calling cards of unseen planets, carved by the bodies as they travel through the disc.

The New Scientist quoted Wladimir Lyra at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, as saying, “I call it the dark matter argument. There is something you are seeing that you cannot explain, and you blame the gravity of something you cannot see.”

Lyra and Marc Kuchner at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, had even demonstrated that interactions between dust and gas alone can account for the rings. Dust concentrates in regions of high-pressure gas. As the star heats the dust, it in turn causes the gas to heat up and expands, creating higher pressure which then accumulates more dust.  Lyra and Kuchner replicated this feedback process and, with no planets in their model, they created numerous types of structure, including elongated rings and clumps.

This only supported their new study that the rings could be created on their own. The result is that the only exoplanet revealed by Hubble Space Telescope, Fomalhaut had a disc around it and till date was believed to be a planet. Now this theory might disapprove the belief. (With Inputs from Internet- Aarkay)