Pingie: HTTP:: Why Protoplanetary Disks Sometimes Look Weird

HTTP:: Why Protoplanetary Disks Sometimes Look Weird
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It's common knowledge that, once a star forms from a collapsed cloud of cosmic gas and dust, it produces a protoplanetary disk around it. In this disk, large amounts of dust eventually clump together and give birth to meteors, asteroids, comets, moons and planets. But, in some telescope images, stars reveal disks of unusual and seemingly impossible shapes, a phenomenon for which astronomers have had no plausible explanation until now. A new study by scientists at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Maryland, now proposes a simple and elegant explanation, ScienceDaily reports. The team, led by astronomer John Debes, argues that the motion of the respective star through the interstellar gas â€" which permeates even the space between galaxies â€" is what causes the peculiar protoplanetary disk shapes. “The disks contain small comet- or asteroid-like bodies that may grow to form planets. These small bodies often collide, which produces a lot of fine dust,” !
he says, adding that, as the star “travels,” it bumps into gas clouds along its path. These collisions trigger the formation of winds, which in turn create turbulences in the disks. “The small particles slam into the flow, slow down, and gradually bend from their original trajectories to follow it,&rdq...
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