There's a nicer image in the Independent.
Newborn planets spotted slurping up gas from young parent star
Astroboffins have seen a key stage in the birth of giant planets for the first time, as the streams of gas and dust guzzled by newly forming worlds are spotted around a young star. Artist’s impression of the disc and gas streams around HD 142527 An artist’s impression of the disc of gas and cosmic dust around the young …
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Thursday 3rd January 2013 13:09 GMT Anonymous Coward
"The astronomers have been using the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile to study HD 142527, a young star over 450 million light years from Earth."
Err... 450 million light years? Not quite!
Surely some mistake. 140pc ~ 456ly not 450 million as per the article!
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Thursday 3rd January 2013 13:13 GMT Ragarath
We think that there is a giant planet hidden within, and causing, each of these streams
What makes them think it is a planet over say another star forming, to perhaps form a binary system assuming their is enough debris?
They find it impossible to tell anything about the planets they have supposedly found orbiting other stars (I am saying supposedly because it could be people from the planet Zarg in their planet sized battleships causing the wobbles) so what makes them think they have a planet here?
I am not an astronomer so please explain to me.
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Thursday 3rd January 2013 16:08 GMT David Pollard
The angular momentum problem
Almost all the mass of the solar system is concentrated in the Sun, yet most of the angular momentum is in the planets.
Conservation of momentum as the gas cloud from which stars form condenses would otherwise cause them to spin rather fast. A likely explanation of the reported observations is that magnetohydrodynamic processes are transferring angular momentum outwards from the incoming gas which is forming the star, and that these are also leading to the creation of planets.
http://lifeng.lamost.org/courses/astrotoday/CHAISSON/AT315/HTML/AT31505.HTM
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Thursday 3rd January 2013 16:55 GMT Bhairava
Mass
As you suggested yourself, there's not enough mass. Total system mass is estimated at about 2.5 stellar masses, but the total disk mass is only 0.15 solar masses. That's very big for a halo, but obviously not enough to form a conventional binary, even if it could all be accreted into one body.
Besides, the Zarg typically use a discontinuous antihelical tau neutrino gamma-class drive, which leaves an entirely different particle signature.
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Thursday 3rd January 2013 14:43 GMT Bob Merkin
Try again
If we had telescopes (ground-based, no less) capable of resolving the image presented in this article from 450 MILLION light years away, we wouldn't be fumbling around trying to find extrasolar planets. We'd be inspecting what ET is having for dinner on every inhabited planet in the galaxy. As has already been mentioned, the combination of the lack of an "artist's rendition" notice and the incorrect distance measurement serve to give an entirely misleading impression of this finding.
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Thursday 3rd January 2013 15:20 GMT Scott Broukell
Too much information
The image on the left in the Independent bears remarkable similarity to what I image my own inner and outer rings look like when too much hot gas arises in my own system. Which I personally attribute to way too much spicy food. Funny that, cos they say the universe is a chilli place init ;)
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Thursday 3rd January 2013 16:59 GMT hapticz
Yummy?
ok, granted, gravity acts like an attractive process, but SLURPING? pahhleeeese!
when humans stop projecting their fairly primitive perceptions, upon the rest of the universe, it may reveal itself to us for face value, even reveal its true power. until then, enjoy slurping up your expensive latte, coke, and contaminated foodstuffs.
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Monday 7th January 2013 20:28 GMT Thraciana
Is the same planet (star at that time) discovered by a team of astronomers led by Jane Greaves of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in the same constellation, Taurus, in 2008?
Read and compare (from National Geographic, april 2008) ..
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The newfound protoplanet, named HL Tau b, was discovered taking shape about 520 light-years away in the constellation Taurus.
HL Tau, the parent star, is itself in its infancy, since it's believed to be less than a hundred thousand years old. Our own sun, by comparison, has been blazing for more than 4.5 billion years.
The new planet is a "distinct orbiting ball of gas and dust, which is exactly how a very young protoplanet should look," Greaves said in a statement.
"The planet will probably take millions of years to settle down into its final form," she said. "So we really are seeing it very early—even a bit like the first cells that make up a human embryo in the womb."
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the complete source is here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080403-planet-embryo.html