Stars and planets grow up together as siblings: Study

Berlin, Oct 24 : In a unique study, astronomers have found compelling evidence that the planets begin forming while stars are still infants and they grow up together like siblings.
The high-resolution image obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) shows a young proto-stellar disk with multiple gaps and rings of dust.
This new result, published in the journal Nature, shows the youngest and most detailed example of dust rings acting as cosmic cradles, where the seeds of planets form and take hold.
An international team of scientists led by Dominique Segura-Cox at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Germany targeted the proto-star IRS 63 with the ALMA radio observatory.
This system is 470 light-years from Earth and located deep within the dense L1709 interstellar cloud in the Ophiuchus constellation.
Proto-stars as young as IRS 63 are still swaddled in a large and massive blanket of gas and dust called an envelope, and the proto-star and disk feed from this reservoir of material.