When a young solar system gets going it's little more than a young star and a rotating disk of debris. Accepted thinking says that the swirling debris is swept up in planet formation. But a new study ...

This simulation of a lone super-Earth in a protoplanetary disk takes into account the effects of dust in addition to gas, resulting in a much more realistic picture. After 2,000 orbits, narrow gaps ...

Still from a simulation of a forming planetary disk. The images show the rotating inner disk along the top half, and the shadow it casts on the outer disk in the lower half. CREDIT Rebecca Nealon / ...

Planetary systems form within protoplanetary disks rotating around protostars. The disks are expected to be unstable against their self-gravity during the early phase of their evolution 1. It is, ...

A short animation showing how turbulent forces (the Coriolis Effect and vertical shear) mix up the layers of dust and gas orbiting young stars. This animation is taken from Joseph Barranco's 3-D ...

Astronomers from the University of Warwick reveal a new phenomenon dubbed the "rocking shadow" effect that describes how disks in forming planetary systems are oriented, and how they move around their ...

Planet formation protoplanetary disk science saw a landmark advance at AAS 248, where Richard Teague of MIT presented the ...

Giant planets that developed early in a star system's life could solve a mystery of why spiral structures are not observed in young protoplanetary discs, according to a new study. Giant planets that ...

Planets form in disks of dust and gas called protoplanetary disks that whirl around a central protostar during its final assembly. Planets form in disks of dust and gas called protoplanetary disks ...

Our results demonstrate that the abundance of the gaseous and solid material in protoplanetary disks in the planet-forming regions changes as a function of time and disk semi-major axis. For solid ...