The James Webb Space Telescope has found evidence of two giant asteroids slamming into each other in a nearby star system. The colossal collision ejected 100,000 times more dust than the impact that killed the dinosaurs.
While the young star system currently contains at least two gas giant planets it has no known rocky worlds like our own. But rocky inner planets may be in the process of forming, thanks to large dust-producing collisions like the one spotted by JWST, the researchers behind the new findings said in a June 10 presentation at the 244th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Madison, Wisconsin.
Related: James Webb telescope spots wind blowing faster than a bullet on '2-faced planet' with eternal night This means that, sometime 20 years ago, a gigantic collision between two asteroids likely occurred, pounding the bodies into vast quantities of dust with particles smaller than pollen or powdered sugar, Chen said.