Astronomers have long grappled with the question, “How do planets form?” A new collaboration among Michigan State University, Arizona State University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will seek to answer this question with the help of a powerful telescope and high-performance computers.  

The team of researchers will use 154 hours on the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, to probe the atmospheres of seven planets beyond our solar system – all of which were formed less than 300 million years ago, around the time dinosaurs roamed the Earth. In conjunction with JWST, this collaboration, called the KRONOS program, will use computers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, or LLNL, to create atmospheric models that could lead to understanding how planets form, evolve and possibly even harbor conditions favorable for life.

“Understanding the compositions of planetary atmospheres at different ages is still a big unknown because these planets are hard to find and even harder to characterize,” said KRONOS program co-principal investigator Adina Feinstein, a NASA Sagan Fellow and incoming assistant professor at MSU. “With the precision and instruments aboard JWST, we’re excited to have the ability to begin to directly address questions of what natal planets look like.”