The James Webb Space Telescope is one step closer to solving a twenty-year-old NASA Hubble mystery. Webb has confirmed a long-discussed Hubble discovery: The existence of planet-forming disks in the early Universe that were incompatible with their environment and lasted longer than expected.

In 2003, Hubble had detected traces of a giant planet from an ancient period when heavy elements (such as iron and carbon) were extremely rare in our galaxy. But the question of how this planet could have gotten so big with such limited material remains to be answered.

The James Webb Space Telescope has studied a star-forming cluster in the nearby Small Magellanic Cloud, which has fewer heavy elements. This cluster is a perfect example for Webb's study, as it has conditions similar to star clusters in the early universe. It is also similar to Hubble's observations of the early Milky Way.

Webb's high-precision instruments are able to analyze the chemical properties of the structures under study in detail by separating light into its components. With this method, it was discovered that stars in the NGC 346 cluster harbor longer-lived disks that allow their planets to grow, despite the lack of heavy elements. But how do these disks last long enough to enable the formation of large planets? Perhaps the disks take longer to dissipate in star clusters with fewer heavy elements. Or maybe the gas clouds that make up these stars produce larger and more massive disks, allowing them to survive longer. A combination of these two factors could explain this unusual phenomenon.

Image description:

In the center of the image are orange and pink arcs forming a boat-like shape. One end of these arcs points to the upper right side of the image and the other to the lower left side. Another plume of orange and pink extends from the center to the upper left corner of the image. To the right of this cloud is a large cluster of white stars. Scattered throughout the image are various other white stars and several galaxies of different sizes. Ten small yellow circles placed at various points in the image indicate the positions of the ten stars studied in this study.

Image credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Olivia C. Jones (UK ATC), Guido De Marchi (ESTEC), Margaret Meixner (USRA)