planet formation
Webb Joins the Hunt for Protoplanets
We can't understand what we can't clearly see. That fact plagues scientists who study how planets form. Planet formation happens…
This Planet-Forming Disk has More Water Than Earth’s Oceans
Astronomers have detected a large amount of water vapour in the protoplanetary disk around a young star. There's at least…
How We Get Planets from Clumping Dust
Our gleaming Earth, brimming with liquid water and swarming with life, began as all rocky planets do: dust. Somehow, mere…
This Planet is Way Too Big for its Star
Scientists love outliers. Outliers are nature's way of telling us what its boundaries are and where its limits lie. Rather…
JWST Reveals Protoplanetary Disks in a Nearby Star Cluster
The Orion Nebula is a favourite among stargazers, certainly one of mine. It’s a giant stellar nebula out of which,…
JWST Searches for Planets in the Fomalhaut System
The Fomalhaut system is nearby in astronomical terms, and it's also one of the brightest stars in the night sky.…
Seeing the Moment Planets Start to Form
Nature makes few duplicates, and planets are as distinct from one another as snowflakes are. But planets all start out…
Machine Learning is a Powerful Tool When Searching for Exoplanets
A new machine learning technique will help astronomers detect young exoplanets in disks surrounding other stars.
Jupiter is up to 9% Rock and Metal, Which Means it Ate a lot of Planets in its Youth
Jupiter is composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium. The amounts of each closely conform to the theoretical quantities in…
We’ve Now Seen Planet-Forming Disks Around Hundreds of Young Stars. What Do They Tell Us?
Is our Solar System comparable to other solar systems? What do other systems look like? We know from exoplanet studies…