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These dusty young stars are changing the rules of planet-building

Astronomers peer inside planetary nurseries for clues about how our Solar System and others came to be.
  1. Rebecca Boyle

    1. Rebecca Boyle is a freelance science journalist based in St Louis, Missouri.

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Some 100,000 years ago, when Neanderthals still occupied the caves of southern Europe, a star was born. It appeared when a ball of gas collapsed and ignited within a stellar factory known as the Taurus Molecular Cloud. Then, leftover material began to cool and coalesce around it, forming dust grains and a hazy envelope of gas.

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Nature 564, 20-23 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07591-8

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