How do Planets Form? NASA Wants Your Help Finding Out

A NASA citizen science project called Disk Detective enlists volunteers to study images of solar systems as they're forming.

Aug 28, 2020 5:30 PMSep 2, 2020 4:06 PM

Astronomers think giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn should form in just a few million years, wiping out the planetary disks they emerged from. However, citizen scientists recently discovered that some disks can last 10 times longer than that, earning the title Peter Pan disks, because they look younger than they are. (Credit: Jonathan Holden/NASA).

Citizen Science Salon is a partnership between Discover and SciStarter.org.

How long does it take planets to form in solar systems? Since 2014, tens of thousands of volunteers have helped NASA try to answer this question by looking at telescope images of solar systems as their protoplanetary disks are still forming.

NASA’s Disk Detectives is a citizen science project that enlists members of the public to help analyze data. It was designed to discover disks of gas, rock and dust circling other stars. These structures appear early on in planet formation. So, peering into a planetary disk is like looking at a baby photo of a future solar system.

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