How does a young star grow?

Science News : Because budding planets rotating about a young star tend to consume most of the gas and dust swirling around it, astronomers have wondered how the star itself can continue to grow. Using data collected by the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope, Simon Casassus of the University of Chile and colleagues have been studying star HD 142527, which is younger and bigger than our Sun and located some 450 light-years from Earth. They believe that a large planet orbiting the star clears a gap in the swirling disk of gas and dust, âlike a snowplow shoveling roads,â writes Alexandra Witze for Science News. Protoplanets then cause filaments of denser gas to form across the gap, channeling material from the outer disk to the inner one and thus feeding material to the star. Although the planets in question have not been directly detected, the ALMA telescope has shown the giant swath in the gasâdust disk and faint traces of the denser gas filaments stretching across it.