Previously Unseen Stage of Planet Formation Observed

SchrodingerZ writes "Seen from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile; scientists have detected a gas giant planet focusing material from a gas cloud toward a main star. The star, HD 142527, is a young 2 million years old, and is 450 light-years from Earth. The system has 'A disk of spinning dust and gas left over from its formation... and from this material, planets are being created.' The planetesimals are drawing material from the dust cloud inward, effectively fueling the expansion of the parent star, currently twice the size of our own Sun. 'Theoretical simulations have predicted such bridges between outer and inner portions of disks surrounding stars, but none have been directly observed until now.' Simon Casassus, lead scientist at the University of Chile, said, 'Currently, the only mechanism known to produce such gap-crossing dense molecular flows, with residual carbon monoxide gas more diffusely spread out inside the gap, is planetary formation.' While the planets currently are not visible, their presence is very noticeable. More examination of the dust cloud is needed to precisely pinpoint the planet(s)."

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Re:Very cool!

[alendit]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_space#Intergalactic [wikipedia.org]

Present estimates put the average energy density of the Universe at the equivalent of 5.9 protons per cubic meter, including dark energy, dark matter, and ordinary, baryonic matter, or atoms.

The Nature IS vacuum.

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[jovius]

The direction of the density change also indicates that there's some kind of a vacuum cleaning operation going on.

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[fatphil]

I thought that could only occur within a dyson sphere?

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[wonkey_monkey]

If nature abhorred a vacuum, it wouldn't be condensing planets out of dust and gas, leaving behind "more" vacuum ;)

Please let warp drive work in my lifetime

[eksith]

So I can at least get live pictures of things like this happening close-up at least before I die

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[Jetra]

Technically, it happened 450 years ago, so who knows what it looks like now? (I know, I know, 1 light-year =/= a year. If someone can give me proper calculations, it would be appreciated)

Lucky bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one hell of a discovery. I imagine that anyone that can observe this system will be planning to take a look pretty soon. How often do you get to see a solar system forming close enough to potentially study the planets and observe the gas flows?

Let me repeat: lucky fucking bastards.

sigh

[wbr1]

Astronomy has become such a dead subject on slashdot. Perhaps if someone discovered bitcoins, raspberry pis, or Windows 8 in another stolar system it will become popular again.

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