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  • Review Article
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Understanding planet formation using microgravity experiments

Nature Reviews Physics volume 3, pages 405–421 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

In 2018, images were released of a planet being formed around the star PDS 70, offering a tantalizing glimpse into how planets come into being. However, many questions remain about how dust evolves into planets, and astrophysical observations are unable to provide all the answers. It is therefore necessary to perform experiments to reveal key details and, to avoid unwanted effects from the Earth’s gravitational pull, it is often necessary to perform such experiments in microgravity platforms. This Review sketches current models of planet formation and describes the experiments needed to test the models.

Key points

  • Planet formation remains hidden from observations, although new astronomical instruments show where planets form and under what conditions their growth begins.

  • Planet formation cannot be modelled or simulated from scratch, but theoretical studies rely on results from experiments, either as verification or as input parameters.

  • Many experiments require microgravity conditions, as the mechanisms to be investigated are too subtle to be studied in normal laboratory conditions.

  • Microgravity experiments cover a large variety of physical processes, including dust collisions, particle transport, wind erosion and the evolution of planetary surfaces.

  • Laboratory and microgravity experiments have shown that aggregation of solids has certain barriers, with growth being limited or even prevented by elastic rebound, fragmentation, wind erosion or impact erosion.

  • Microgravity experiments have revealed charge-driven growth by triboelectric processes as a possible mechanism to overcome the so-called bouncing barrier.

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Fig. 1: PDS 70, a young star ~5 million years old with a planetary system in the making, where a planet embedded in a protoplanetary disk is directly imaged.
Fig. 2: Processes important during evolution from dust to planetary bodies that are accessible to laboratory and microgravity experiments.
Fig. 3: Examples of different collision outcomes.
Fig. 4: Observed and simulated clusters of charged grains.
Fig. 5: Wind erosion and its experimental measurement.

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Acknowledgements

A significant part of this work is supported by the German Space Administration (DLR) with funds provided by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) under grants 50WM1760, 50WM1762, 50WM2140, 50WM2142, 50WM2049. The authors acknowledge access to microgravity platforms in recent years by ESA. Part of the work is also funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) under grants WU 321/16-1 and WU 321/18-1.

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  1. Faculty of Physics, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany

    Gerhard Wurm & Jens Teiser

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  1. Gerhard Wurm
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  2. Jens Teiser
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Both authors contributed to all aspects of the article.

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Correspondence to Gerhard Wurm.

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Nature Reviews Physics thanks Barbara Ercolano, Meiying Hou, Matthias Sperl and Ralf Stannarius for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Wurm, G., Teiser, J. Understanding planet formation using microgravity experiments. Nat Rev Phys 3, 405–421 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-021-00312-7

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