What astronomers have previously described as a stellar nursery, the Orion Nebula, is actually a place of death and destruction, Boulder scientists found in a study published today in the journal Science. With new views of gas and dust discs around young stars, researchers have been able to see particles clump together in what marks the first stage of forming a planet.
Planetary formation is a hazardous process.
Right now, if you want to build large planets, it's like building a skyscraper in a tornado. The paper describing these findings was written by Throop and his former graduate school advisers Larry Esposito and John Bally, who both work at the University of Colorado. Mark McCaughrean of Germany's Potsdam Astrophysical Institute also contributed to the study. The dust in the photos looked gray, not red as the scientists expected. The gray color showed astronomers that the dust particles were much larger than ever seen before.