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Early onset of planet formation observed in a nascent star system

Narrow rings and gaps have been seen in a particularly young disk of dust and gas around a nascent star, using the world’s most powerful radio telescope. The finding provides a potential glimpse of the earliest stages of planet formation.
  1. Patrick Sheehan

    1. Patrick Sheehan is at the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60201, USA.

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Young stars are typically surrounded by rotating disks of gas and dust, called protoplanetary, or protostellar, disks. These structures are, crucially, the reservoirs of material that go on to form planets, but when the planet-forming process begins is a major open question. In a paper in Nature, Segura-Cox et al.1 cast light on this mystery by reporting a series of rings and gaps in a protostellar disk that is so young that its birth cloud is still collapsing to form the star and disk. Such features are frequently attributed to planets carving lanes through the disk. Given that this is perhaps the youngest disk observed to have such features, the findings help to set the timescale for the emergence of planets and place key constraints on theories of how planets assemble.

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Nature 586, 205-206 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02748-w

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