Interferometry of stunning spiral arms around young star reveals gravity’s hand in planet formation.Traditionally, planet formation has been described as a “bottom-up” process, as dust grains gradually collect into bigger conglomerations over tens of millions of years, from microns to centimeters to meters to kilometers. Alternatively, another theory proposes that planets can form rapidly by a “top-down” process, where circumstellar disk material in spiral arms fragments due to gravitational instability.

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