‘Cosmic hamburger’ shows signs of planet formation, astronomers find

An illustration of Gomez’s Hamburger with its stacked layers of gas and dust swirling around a young star. Pic Courtesy/P.Vosteen

A team of astronomers recently discovered something they didn't predict in a "cosmic hamburger" - one of the biggest planet-forming disks of gas and dust, or protoplanetary disks, humanity has ever seen.

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a powerful array of 66 radio antennas located in northern Chile, the team discovered the first signs of planet formation in the dense gas layers of a system known as Gomez's Hamburger (GoHam).

GoHam's tasty appearance is due to the fact that from Earth it is seen edge-on with stacked layers of gas "buns" rotating around a young star "burger." This orientation allows the structure of Go Ham to be viewed in a way that isn't possible for other protoplanetary disks swirling around similar young stars.

As such, the study of GoHam and the discovery of tantalising hints of planet formation could give astronomers a better understanding of how giant planets form at great distances from their parent stars.

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