University of Arizona postdoctoral researcher Ruobing Dong and his colleagues propose that super-Earths can carve out multiple gaps in the disks of gas and dust that surround young stars. [Gallery: The Strangest Alien Planets]Young stars form with clouds of gas and dust around them, which, as the star spins, eventually coalesce into a disk. As tiny dust grains in this disk collide, they form larger bodies, and those bodies attract more gas and dust in turn. ALMA saw that the disks around those stars had gaps in them, making a ringlike pattern. The computer simulations performed by Dong and his team produced disks like those observed by ALMA — even without any gas giants in the mix.

Source: Fox News July 19, 2017 13:16 UTC