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Protoplanet

A protoplanet, also known as a planetary embryo, is a compact, growing celestial body formed within a protoplanetary disk surrounding a young star, representing an intermediate stage in the planet formation process where planetesimals and pebbles accrete to build larger structures that eventually evolve into planets.^[1] These bodies typically range in mass from lunar-sized (about 0.01 Earth masses) to several Earth masses, with compositions varying from rocky interiors in inner disk regions to icy mantles beyond the snow line, and they can undergo internal differentiation into core-mantle structures within roughly 10 million years due to heating from accretion and radioactive decay.^[2] ^[1] Protoplanets originate from the collapse of a molecular cloud under gravity, often triggered by a supernova shockwave, which forms a rotating disk of gas and dust with a diameter exceeding 10 billion kilometers around the protostar.^[2] Within this disk, which has a mass about 1% of the central star's and persists for a few million years, friction and gravitational instabilities concentrate particles into kilometer-sized planetesimals via mechanisms like streaming instability.^[1] These planetesimals then collide and merge through runaway and oligarchic growth, enhanced by efficient pebble accretion—where small, drifting millimeter-to-centimeter particles are captured—to rapidly form protoplanets, particularly near the snow line where ice facilitates faster buildup.^[1] In the Solar System, for instance, such processes occurred about 4.6 billion years ago, leading to the formation of protoplanets that collided to shape the terrestrial planets and giant planet cores.^[3] Key characteristics of protoplanets include their ability to open gaps in the protoplanetary disk once they reach the pebble isolation mass (around 10 Earth masses), which halts further solid accretion and may trigger gas envelope buildup for giant planets, as well as orbital migration driven by torques from disk gas that can scatter them inward or into resonances with other bodies.^[1] Observations of protoplanetary disks, such as those around stars like HL Tauri, reveal ring-like structures and gaps interpreted as signs of embedded protoplanets influencing disk evolution through dynamical interactions.^[1] In multi-protoplanet systems, instabilities like those modeled in the Grand Tack scenario explain features such as Mars's unexpectedly low mass and the asteroid belt's composition, highlighting how collisions among these embryos deliver volatiles and metals to final planets while ejecting remnants as asteroids or comets.^[1] Overall, protoplanets are crucial building blocks whose growth, migration, and interactions dictate the diversity of exoplanetary systems observed today, from compact super-Earth chains to distant gas giants.^[1]

Definition and Characteristics

Definition

A protoplanet is defined as a planetary embryo consisting of a compact mass formed through the gravitational aggregation of planetesimals within a protoplanetary disk surrounding a newborn star, actively undergoing accretion to evolve into a mature planet.^[4] These bodies typically range in size from approximately that of the Moon (about 3,500 km in diameter) to several times that of Earth (up to ~12,000 km or more), representing an intermediate stage where sufficient mass has accumulated to drive differentiation and internal heating.^[5] The concept of protoplanets traces its origins to the early 20th century planetesimal hypothesis, proposed by geologist Thomas C. Chamberlin and astronomer Forest Ray Moulton in 1905, which posited that solar system bodies formed via collisions and accretion of small, solid planetesimals rather than from a gaseous nebula. This idea laid the groundwork for understanding hierarchical growth in planet formation, though the specific term "protoplanet" emerged later in the context of mid-20th-century models emphasizing eddy condensation in solar nebulae.^[6] Over time, the framework evolved into the modern core accretion paradigm, where protoplanets serve as the solid cores around which gas envelopes may build in the case of giant planets. Protoplanets differ from their precursors, planetesimals—smaller, kilometer-scale solid fragments that lack significant gravitational dominance—and from fully formed planets, which have ceased major accretion and stabilized their structures through orbital clearing and dynamical interactions.^[7] This transitional phase occurs rapidly, with protoplanet formation generally completing within 1 to 10 million years following the star's formation, constrained by the lifetime of the surrounding protoplanetary disk.

Physical and Compositional Properties

Protoplanets exhibit a characteristic size range of approximately 3,000 to 12,000 km in diameter, corresponding to masses between 0.01 and several (up to ~10) Earth masses during their primary growth phase via accretion of planetesimals and pebbles.^[8] ^[9] These dimensions reflect the transition from smaller planetesimal aggregates to more substantial embryonic bodies capable of further gravitational capture, with rocky protoplanets in the inner disk regions achieving denser structures due to higher temperatures and volatile loss; icy protoplanets beyond the snow line can grow to larger masses as precursors to giant planet cores. Internally, protoplanets develop differentiated layers, including a metallic core, silicate mantle, and potentially a thin crust, driven by heating from high-velocity impacts and short-lived radioactive isotopes such as ^{26}Al.^[8] This differentiation occurs as accretion energy elevates internal temperatures, often leading to partial or full melting and separation of materials by density. Compositionally, protoplanets in the inner protoplanetary disk consist primarily of refractory silicates and metals, while those forming farther out incorporate volatile ices like water and CO_2, resulting in lower overall densities and hybrid rocky-icy cores.^[9] Precursors to gas giant planets may additionally acquire tenuous gaseous envelopes of hydrogen and helium before runaway accretion. Thermal conditions within protoplanets reach up to 2,000 K, primarily from accretion heating that sustains molten states and promotes outgassing of volatiles into nascent atmospheres.^[8] This energy input, combined with radiative cooling modulated by overlying steam or CO_2 envelopes, influences the duration of magma oceans and the efficiency of core formation. Orbitally, protoplanets occupy eccentric paths within the protoplanetary disk due to mutual gravitational perturbations among growing bodies, while disk gas interactions induce migration, altering their semi-major axes over timescales of 10^5 to 10^6 years.^[10]

Formation Mechanisms

Planetesimal Accretion

The planetesimal hypothesis, introduced by geologist Thomas C. Chamberlin and astronomer Forest Ray Moulton in 1905, posited that the solar system's planets originated from the gravitational aggregation of small, solid bodies—termed planetesimals—ejected from the Sun during a close encounter with another star, providing a cold accretion mechanism distinct from gaseous nebular collapse models.^[11] This framework laid the groundwork for understanding planetary growth through collisions of solid particles rather than direct condensation from a hot nebula.^[12] The hypothesis was significantly refined in the 1960s by Soviet astronomer Viktor Safronov, who formalized the dynamics of planetesimal interactions within a protoplanetary disk, emphasizing bottom-up growth from dust to planets via successive collisions. In Safronov's model, kilometer-sized planetesimals first emerge from the coagulation and settling of sub-millimeter dust grains in the disk's midplane, where aerodynamic drag concentrates solids. These planetesimals then experience gravitational perturbations that excite their orbits, leading to collisions; a subset of larger bodies undergoes runaway accretion, rapidly dominating mass accumulation as their gravitational influence outpaces smaller peers, eventually forming protoplanets of lunar to Earth-mass scales. Central to this process is the gravitational enhancement of the collision cross-section, which increases the effective area for impacts beyond the simple geometric size:

\sigma = \pi (R_p + R_t)^2 \left(1 + \frac{v_{\rm esc}^2}{v_{\rm rel}^2}\right)

Here, R_p is the protoplanet radius, R_t is the target planetesimal radius, v_{\rm esc} is the escape velocity from the protoplanet surface, and v_{\rm rel} is the relative velocity between bodies; the second term captures gravitational focusing, which bends trajectories and boosts accretion efficiency when v_{\rm esc} > v_{\rm rel}. Low relative velocities, typically below 1 km/s in the early disk, favor sticking collisions over erosion, enabling net growth. In the inner Solar System, runaway accretion builds protoplanets within approximately 1 million years, constrained by the disk's lifetime and solid surface density of about 10 g/cm² at 1 AU.^[13] Nebular gas drag plays a dual role, damping planetesimal eccentricities and inclinations to maintain low v_{\rm rel} (around 0.1–1 m/s for small bodies), which promotes accretion but can also cause orbital decay and radial migration, complicating uniform growth.^[14] Despite these dynamics, planetesimal accretion proves inefficient beyond the snow line (around 2.7 AU in the early disk), where lower solid densities—due to sparser dust distribution and wider orbital spacings—extend growth timescales to tens of millions of years, hindering rapid protoplanet formation.

Pebble Accretion and Alternative Processes

Pebble accretion represents a key mechanism in contemporary models of protoplanet formation, where millimeter- to centimeter-sized dust aggregates, known as pebbles, drift inward through the protoplanetary disk due to aerodynamic drag from the gas and are efficiently captured by growing planetary cores.^[15] This process allows for rapid mass accumulation onto cores that have already reached planetesimal sizes via prior mechanisms, such as gravitational collapse.^[15] The inward radial drift of these pebbles arises from the sub-Keplerian rotation of the disk gas, creating a headwind that couples the particles to the gas flow while enabling their concentration and accretion.^[16] The accretion rate in the pebble accretion regime depends on the regime (e.g., drift-limited or settling-limited) and can be expressed in simplified forms such as \dot{M} \approx 2 \eta v_K \Sigma_p in the drift-limited case for low-mass cores, where \eta is the pressure gradient parameter, v_K is the Keplerian velocity, and \Sigma_p is the pebble surface density, with efficiency factors depending on the Stokes number St.^[16] This highlights how efficiency varies with aerodynamic properties, peaking for intermediate St (typically 0.05 to 0.3), corresponding to pebble sizes of about 1 cm at 1 AU.^[16] Alternative processes complement pebble accretion by facilitating the initial concentration of solids and their delivery to forming cores. The streaming instability, a fluid dynamical instability arising from the relative motion between dust and gas, concentrates pebbles into dense filaments that can gravitationally collapse into planetesimals, providing seeds for subsequent pebble accretion. Additionally, planetary embryos and pressure bumps in the disk—regions of local pressure maxima caused by viscosity transitions or embedded planets—can trap drifting pebbles, enhancing their local surface density and promoting efficient accretion while mitigating rapid inward migration of the cores.^[17] Pebble accretion addresses limitations in classical models by overcoming the meter-size barrier, where dust growth stalls due to high relative velocities and fragmentation in turbulent disks, allowing cores to transition smoothly from planetesimal to protoplanet scales.^[15] This mechanism enables the formation of giant planet cores with masses of 10-20 Earth masses within 1-5 million years, consistent with the lifetimes of observed protoplanetary disks.^[16] Recent refinements in the 2020s incorporate hybrid models that blend pebble and planetesimal accretion, where initial planetesimal growth seeds pebble capture. As of 2024, these models demonstrate how the combination reproduces the compositional diversity of solar system giants, such as Jupiter's enrichment in heavy elements, and explain the late formation of chondrites via Jupiter's migration.^[18] These numerical studies, often using smoothed particle hydrodynamics or N-body integrations, reveal that hybrid accretion rates vary with disk viscosity and metallicity, optimizing core growth in diverse disk environments.^[1]

Evidence in the Solar System

Remnant Protoplanets

Remnant protoplanets in the Solar System primarily survive as large asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, where they represent embryonic planetary bodies that did not fully accrete into planets. These objects failed to grow larger due to the gravitational influence of Jupiter's formation, which excited their orbits and scattered material, preventing further accumulation.^[19]^[20] The compositions of these remnants vary, reflecting formation across a range of heliocentric distances: inner-belt objects like Vesta are dominated by rocky silicates and metals with low volatile content, while outer-belt bodies like Ceres are water-rich and carbonaceous. Orbital dynamics in the asteroid belt further illustrate this disruption, with Kirkwood gaps—regions depleted of asteroids—resulting from mean-motion resonances with Jupiter that destabilize orbits and eject material.^[21] Prominent examples include Ceres, the largest asteroid with a mean diameter of approximately 946 kilometers, which NASA's Dawn mission (2015–2018) revealed as a water-rich body potentially harboring a subsurface brine reservoir or ocean, suggesting internal differentiation and hydrothermal activity. Similarly, Vesta, with a diameter of about 525 kilometers, exhibits a differentiated structure and basaltic surface crust, as confirmed by Dawn's observations from 2011 to 2012, indicating early magmatic processes akin to planetary embryos.^[22]^[23]^[24]^[25] Samples returned by Japan's Hayabusa2 mission from asteroid Ryugu in 2020 and NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission from Bennu in 2023 contain primitive, volatile-rich materials that preserve signatures of early Solar System conditions, resembling the building blocks of protoplanets before significant alteration. In a 2025 analysis of meteorites from the outer Solar System, researchers identified evidence of rapid protoplanet accretion, differentiation, and breakup beyond the snow line, occurring concurrently with inner belt events and highlighting widespread early dynamical instability.^[26]^[27]^[28]^[29]

Geological and Meteoritic Evidence

Meteorites provide key insights into the early differentiation processes of protoplanets, with the Howardite-Eucrite-Diogenite (HED) suite originating from the protoplanet Vesta demonstrating magmatic activity and crustal formation approximately 4.56 billion years ago, shortly after the condensation of the first solids. These meteorites exhibit evidence of a molten interior, including basaltic eucrites formed through partial melting and fractional crystallization, indicating rapid heating and differentiation within the first few million years of Solar System history.^[30] Calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs), found in carbonaceous chondrites, represent the earliest condensed solids from the protoplanetary disk, dating to about 4.567 billion years ago and serving as chronological anchors for subsequent protoplanet formation.^[31] Impact heating played a crucial role in driving core-mantle separation in protoplanets, as evidenced by isotopic systems such as hafnium-tungsten (Hf-W) dating, which records the segregation of metal cores from silicate mantles on timescales of less than 5 million years after CAI formation. In iron meteorites, derived from disrupted protoplanetary cores, the Hf-W chronometry reveals rapid accretion and metallic core formation in parent bodies, with tungsten isotope ratios indicating efficient metal-silicate equilibration during giant impacts.^[32] This process is further supported by the preservation of short-lived radionuclides like aluminum-26, which contributed to internal heating and melting in these early bodies.^[33] A pivotal event in Solar System history was the Moon-forming giant impact around 4.5 billion years ago, where a Mars-sized protoplanet named Theia collided with proto-Earth, ejecting material that coalesced into the Moon; lunar samples from Apollo missions show anorthositic crust and isotopic similarities to Earth, consistent with this shared origin.^[34] Oxygen isotope analyses of lunar rocks confirm a high-degree of mixing between proto-Earth and impactor materials, supporting models of incomplete homogenization during the disk phase following the collision.^[35] Recent analyses of achondritic meteorites from the outer Solar System, including dunitic clasts in carbonaceous chondrites, indicate that protoplanets beyond the snow line underwent accretion, differentiation, and subsequent disruption on timescales of 2–3 million years after CAI formation, concurrent with those in the inner Solar System.^[36] These findings, derived from samples like those from the Ryugu asteroid, reveal protracted core formation interrupted by impacts, leading to the fragmentation of differentiated protoplanets and the scattering of their remnants.^[37] N-body simulations of giant impacts demonstrate how collisions between protoplanets could fragment differentiated bodies, ejecting debris that populated the asteroid belt and contributed to the dynamical excitation observed in main-belt populations.^[38] These models, incorporating resonant interactions with migrating giant planets, show that such disruptions efficiently produced the observed diversity of meteoritic materials while clearing pathways for terrestrial planet growth.^[39]

Extrasolar Protoplanets

Confirmed Observations

The first confirmed extrasolar protoplanets were directly imaged in the PDS 70 system, a young T Tauri star approximately 370 light-years away, using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) equipped with the SPHERE instrument. PDS 70 b and PDS 70 c, discovered between 2019 and 2020, orbit within cleared gaps in the protoplanetary disk, with estimated masses of 2–8 Jupiter masses for b and 5–10 Jupiter masses for c, indicating ongoing gas accretion during formation.^[40] These planets exhibit warm temperatures ranging from 1,000 to 2,000 K, consistent with their youth and proximity to the central star, and show H-alpha emission signatures of active accretion.^[41] In 2025, James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations using NIRCam and interferometry provided detailed atmospheric insights, revealing water vapor and potential spiral accretion streams linking the planets to the disk, while hinting at a possible third protoplanet.^[42]^[43] A more recent confirmation came in August 2025 with the direct imaging of WISPIT 2b, a protoplanet embedded in a dust ring gap around the young star WISPIT 2, observed using the MagAO-X instrument on the Magellan Telescope. This ~5 Jupiter-mass object, located about 309 milliarcseconds from its host, displays H-alpha emission indicative of accretion from the surrounding transitional disk, marking it as a wide-separation forming gas giant.^[44] Its detection in a multi-ring disk highlights the role of gaps in facilitating protoplanet growth, with the planet's warm surface temperatures (~1,000 K) suggesting ongoing heating from infalling material.^[45] Radial velocity analysis of the disk further corroborates the protoplanet's dynamical influence on the ring structure.^[46] In July 2025, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) provided spectroscopic evidence of the earliest stages of planet formation in the HOPS-315 system, a proto-star 1,300 light-years away in Orion, capturing gaseous silicon monoxide condensing into solid silicates in a disk analogous to the young Solar System. These observations reveal kinematic signatures of disk rotation and hot mineral condensation, with temperatures around 1,500–2,000 K driving the solidification of silicates as precursors to planetesimal formation.^[47] Millimeter-wavelength data highlight this initial assembly phase in a Sun-like analog system.^[48] These confirmations rely primarily on direct imaging with coronagraphs to suppress stellar light, combined with H-alpha spectroscopy for accretion detection and disk gap analysis via ALMA and JWST to verify planetary masses and orbits.^[49] Such observations underscore protoplanets' transitional nature, with properties aligning with core accretion models where gas envelopes build around rocky cores in disk environments.^[50]

Candidate and Unconfirmed Protoplanets

One prominent candidate protoplanet is AB Aurigae b, first proposed in 2021 based on high-contrast imaging with the Subaru Telescope's SCExAO instrument, which revealed a bright source embedded in the protoplanetary disk of the young Herbig Ae/Be star AB Aurigae at approximately 93 AU.^[51] This candidate, estimated to have a mass around 4-13 times that of Jupiter, shows spectral features suggestive of ongoing accretion, but its nature remains debated, with some analyses favoring a gravitationally bound planet and others attributing the emission to a disk feature or background source rather than a true protoplanet.^[52] Similarly, the iconic protoplanetary disk around HL Tauri, imaged by ALMA in 2014, exhibits multiple concentric rings and gaps extending to about 100 AU, which have been interpreted as signposts of embedded protoplanets carving out these structures through gravitational interactions.^[53] These gaps, resolved at submillimeter wavelengths, suggest the presence of several low-mass companions (potentially 0.1-1 Jupiter masses) influencing dust distribution, though alternative explanations like dust trapping in pressure bumps cannot be ruled out without higher-resolution confirmation.^[54] Recent 2025 observations have highlighted additional candidates around young solar analogs. In August 2025, the Wide Separation Planets in Time (WISPIT) survey using the MagAO-X instrument on the Giant Magellan Telescope detected Hα emission indicative of an accreting protoplanet, WISPIT 2b, in a dust-free gap within the multi-ringed disk of a ~5 Myr-old Sun-like star, suggesting active gas giant formation at wide separations (~50 AU).^[55] This unexpected finding challenges core accretion models for such distant objects, as the inferred mass (~3-5 Jupiter masses) implies rapid growth inconsistent with standard timelines. Complementing this, November 2025 results from the Search for Protoplanets with Aperture Masking (SPAM) survey, employing non-redundant aperture masking interferometry on Keck's NIRC2, provided the tightest constraints yet on undetected companions in PDS 70-like transitional disks, revealing clumpy substructures and brightness asymmetries that hint at hidden protoplanets influencing disk evolution without direct detection.^[56]^[57] Indirect evidence for unconfirmed protoplanets often stems from chemical asymmetries in disks observed by ALMA. For instance, azimuthal variations in molecular emission in the Oph-IRS 48 disk have been observed, potentially indicating dynamical perturbations from unseen companions that affect gas-phase chemistry. Such asymmetries, traced via molecules like CN and NO, provide kinematic and abundance signatures of dynamical clearing by unseen companions. Additionally, an August 2025 University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) study of 49 young stars found that approximately one-third of protoplanetary disks exhibit spin-orbit misalignments (tilts up to 10-20 degrees), potentially driven by protoplanet-induced warping or external torques during early formation stages.^[58] Distinguishing these candidates from disk instabilities or transient features poses significant challenges, as current resolutions (e.g., ~0.1 arcsec for ALMA) often blur planetary signals with large-scale disk dynamics.^[59] Many remain unconfirmed pending higher-fidelity data, such as from JWST's ongoing Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) surveys of transitional disks, which aim to resolve thermal emissions but have yet to yield definitive protoplanet spectra in these systems. Future facilities like the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) with its High Angular Resolution Monochromatic Imager (HARMONI) and NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), slated for the 2030s, promise sub-arcsecond imaging and spectroscopy to confirm these inferences by detecting accretion signatures and orbital motions.

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We present a sample study of 16 disks with multiple ring-like structures in the continuum, using published ALMA archival data, to compare their morphologies ...Abstract · Introduction · Sample · Discussion
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Discovery of a Gap H α Protoplanet WISPIT 2b with MagAO-X
Sep 26, 2025 · This star was discovered by the WISPIT survey to have a large multi-ring transitional disk, and is hereafter WISPIT 2. Our H α images of 2025 ...
[55]
The search for protoplanets with aperture masking (SPAM) survey
Sep 18, 2025 · We present new results from and an update on the Search for Protoplanets With Aperture Masking (SPAM) survey, a NIRC2 direct imaging survey ...
[56]
https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of-spie/13627/136270J/The-search-for-protoplanets-with-aperture-masking-SPAM-survey/10.1117/12.3063941.full
[57]
Some young suns are aligned with their planet-forming disks, others ...
Aug 6, 2025 · About two-thirds of the stars and protoplanetary disks were found to be in alignment, while a third of them were misaligned. The modest number ...
[58]
ALMA Inspires New Models for the Evolution of Planet-Forming Disks
May 6, 2025 · Ever since ALMA captured the striking image of HL Tau in 2014, revealing intricate rings and gaps in a disk around a newborn star, astronomers ...