Scientists for the first time have spotted a moon-forming region around a planet beyond our solar system—a Jupiter-like world surrounded by a disk of gas and dust massive enough that it could spawn three moons the size of the one orbiting Earth.
The researchers used the ALMA observatory in Chile’s Atacama desert to detect the disk of swirling material accumulating around one of two newborn planets seen orbiting a young star called PDS 70, located a relatively close 370 light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).
