'Mysterious spiral structures' found extending out of strange star

Mysterious, huge spiral structures, extending out of a young star, have been spotted by astronomers.

The "complex set of spiral arms" reaches out 1,000 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun, and could shed new light on how planets are born.

The spirals were seen coming out of a young variable star, known as RU Lupi, which is thought to be producing new worlds, and has become known as a "planet factory" as a result.

But studies of the gas in the disc that surrounds it appears to show that the process fo forming those planets is much more complex, and less neatly arranged, than previously thought. The complicated web of gas and dust looks something like a miniature galaxy, researchers said.

“We discovered a complex set of spiral arms in carbon monoxide (CO) emission extending to nearly 1,000 astronomical units from the young star RU Lup, which has previously been found to exhibit signs of ongoing planet formation via concentric dust gaps in its protoplanetary disk,” said Jane Huang, who led the research, in a statement.

“CO emission reveals complex structures in the planet-formation environment that are invisible in dust observations alone.”

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