Never-Before-Seen Stage of Planet Birth Revealed Astronomers
studying a newborn star have caught a detailed glimpse of
planets forming around it, revealing a never-before seen stage
of planetary evolution. Large gas giant planets appear to be
clearing a gap in the disk of material surrounding the star, and
using gravity to channel material across the gap to the
interior, helping the star to grow. Theoretical simulations have
predicted such bridges between outer and inner portions of disks
surrounding stars, but none have been directly observed until
now. An international team of astronomers have used the
partially completed Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array
(ALMA) to study a young star about 450 light-years from Earth.
They identified two thin filaments of gas streaming from the
outer disk to the inner, across a broad gap cut by young
planets. "Currently, the only mechanism known to produce such
gap-crossing dense molecular flows, with residual carbon
monoxide gas more diffusely spread out inside t