The Before Times of a Solar System
New observations of young stars capture the cosmic forces that can transform tiny particles into colossal worlds.
Many moons ago, before the pandemic—before we even had moons—our home in the universe was a ring of glowing material, with the young sun in the center, like a donut sprinkled with cosmic dust and gas. Round and round the disk went, whisking particles around, until the material began to stick together in clumps. After millions of years, the clumps curved into the planets and the moons as we know them today, a rich assortment of worlds.
This is our story, but it has happened— happening—countless times across the cosmos, around
