rotating disc of gas and dust tagged posts

This is an artist impression of the whirlwind being liftet up from the protoplanetary disk around the approximately 100,000 year old protostar, TMC1A. Credit: Per Bjerkeli/David Lamm/BOID

Researchers from Niels Bohr Institute have used ALMA telescopes to observe the early stages in the formation of a new solar system. For the first time they have seen how a powerful whirlwind shoot out from the rotating disc of gas and dust surrounding the young star. A new solar system is formed in a large cloud of gas and dust that contracts and condenses due to the force of gravity and eventually becomes so compact that the centre collapses into a ball of gas where the pressure heats the material, resulting in a glowing globe of gas, a star...