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49 CETI star

190 light years from earth.


About 40-50 million years old.


After reaching about 5 million years old the gas orbiting it should have been blown away or spiraled into the mass of the star.


So why does this older star have 2 rings of gas and dust?!


First ring radius of about a billion miles, second ring is 2/3x that size surrounding it!


The science fiction novel Ring World, written Larry Niven, proposed the concept of taking useless material from planets to pound out a ribbon-like surface that surrounds a star. This ribbon is held by the centrifugal force of the star, resulting in lots of useful surface space surrounding the star. Hence, a ring world.


Astronomer Benjamin Zuckerman discovered this star in the Cetus constellation in 1995.


Today there is continued research to figure out why this older star appears to have properties of a newborn star similar to a proto-planetary disk. As I explain in this (poorly pixelated) youtube video!–I’ll re-create this in a higher res video soon!