NASA’s Webb Provides Crash Course on Planet-Shattering Collisions

October 01, 2026 10:00AM (EDT)Release ID: 2026-131
Artist’s concept of a star and its debris disk against the black background of space. The star is in the background, right of center, and depicted as a small, luminous sphere. The debris disk is a large blue ring that encircles the star. The debris disk is angled toward the viewer, so that the portion nearest to the viewer extends beyond the bottom frame of the illustration. Many dark, rocky fragments are scattered throughout the debris disk. In the foreground, toward the left, is a small planetary embryo colliding into the left side of a larger spherical object. The impact site glows bright yellow and orange and has a mottled appearance, as though chunks of both colliding bodies are breaking up and being destroyed. Orange-yellow streams of vapor extend outward from the collision area. Behind the debris disk and its star are many small stars in the background. A label in the bottom right corner reads “Artist’s Concept.”

Summary

The telescope is going beyond grazing the surface of these dusty, chaotic systems.

Approximately 20 years ago, the Spitzer Space Telescope uncovered an enigmatic subclass of circumstellar disks — rings of dust and rock orbiting mature stars. Now a team of astronomers has used the James Webb Space Telescope to further study these confounding environments known as extreme debris disks. Within these disks, Moon-sized and even Mars-sized objects are colliding, creating massive amounts of warm dust. With the largest survey of these disks to date, the team has enough data to begin investigating their composition, origins, and connection to planet formation and evolution — including in our own solar system.

Full Article

In the early history of our solar system, scientists theorize that a Mars-sized object called Theia smashed into the infant Earth, vaporizing massive amounts of rock and blasting it into space. Some of that material coalesced into the Moon, where NASA’s Artemis program is returning humans, preparing for Mars, and shaping the future of space exploration. That long-ago, violent collision reshaped our home planet. Astronomers have used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to examine a class of young stellar systems that show signs of similar upheavals, providing clues to the amount of ...

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News releases highlighting the discoveries of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope are produced for NASA by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, under NASA Contract NAS5-03127. News release content is developed by the News Team in STScI’s Office of Public Outreach.

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