Resumen de Planets born in the heart of a vortex
A dusty tornado spotted around a young star could help explain how planets come to exist. Such dust devils may trap proto-planetary grains, stopping them spiraling inwards to a fiery grave. A team led by Nienke van der Marel of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands used the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array in Chile to observe the young star Oph-IRS 48 at three different wavelengths: one sensitive to dust grains a millimeter across or larger, one that sees smaller dust grains only about 50 micrometers wide and one that sees cold gas. While gas and the smallest dust grains are evenly distributed around the star, the larger particles are concentrated on one side of the star in a crescent-shaped structure spanning about 16.5 billion kilometers. The team says that the most likely explanation for this asymmetry is that a vortex is holding the larger grains in place.
