Every second, more than 3,000 stars are born in the visible universe. Many are surrounded by what astronomers call a protoplanetary disk—a swirling "pancake" of hot gas and dust from which planets ...
Planet-forming disks, maelstroms of gas and dust swirling around young stars, are nurseries that give rise to planetary systems, including our solar system. Astronomers have discovered new details of ...
"How a star accretes mass has a big influence on how the surrounding disk evolves over time, including the way planets form later on," Pascucci said. "The specific ways in which this happens have ...