Abstract
Silicate dust in the interstellar medium is observed to be amorphous1, yet silicate dust in comets2,3 and interplanetary dust particles4 is sometimes partially crystalline. The dust in disks that are thought to be forming planets around some young stars5,6 also appears to be partially crystalline. These observations suggest that as the dust goes from the precursor clouds to a planetary system, it must undergo some processing, but the nature and extent of this processing remain unknown. Here we report observations of highly crystalline silicate dust in the disks surrounding binary red-giant stars. The dust was created in amorphous form in the outer atmospheres of the red giants, and therefore must be processed in the disks to become crystalline. The temperatures in these disks are too low for the grains to anneal; therefore, some low-temperature process must be responsible. As the physical properties of the disks around young stars and red giants are similar, our results suggest that low-temperature crystallization of silicate grains also can occur in protoplanetary systems.
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Acknowledgements
We thank T. Henning and his group for discussions about crystals and crystallization, and R. D. Schuiling for sharing his geophysical knowledge of the crystallization of silicates. F.J.M., I.Y., L.B.F.M.W., A.d.K. and M.E.v.d.A. acknowledge support from NWO grants; C.W. acknowledges support from the Belgian Federal Services for Scientific, Technological and Cultural Affairs, and from the Onderzoeksfonds KU Leuven. H.v.W. and K.M. acknowledge support from the Fund for Scientific Research of Flanders. This work was partly supported by a NWO Spinoza grant to E.P.J. van den Heuvel. This work is based partly on observations with ISO, an ESA project with instruments funded by ESA Member States (especially the PI countries: France, Germany, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom) and with the participation of ISAS and NASA. It also involves observations obtained at the European Southern Observatory, La Silla, Chile.
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Molster, F., Yamamura, I., Waters, L. et al. Low-temperature crystallization of silicate dust in circumstellar disks. Nature 401, 563–565 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/44085
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/44085
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