[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ]

And if I can be shameless: Forbes pays according to traffic, so the more of you who click on the link below and read my stuff, the better they pay me. Ahem.

Astronomers Use The Doppler Effect To Find Three Newborn Planets

For Forbes:

We can’t witness the birth of our own Solar System, but the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is providing a picture of how it may have happened. ALMA spotted signs of three giant planets forming around a young star in our cosmic neighborhood. The technique astronomers used to study these planets is one that can be used to find other newborn worlds, and see exactly how clouds of gas and dust turn into something like the Solar System.

The star, which astronomers gave the memorable name HD 163296, is only about 4 million years old, which in cosmic terms makes it a baby. Researchers used ALMA to take detailed images of the disk of dust and gas surrounding the star, which showed three gaps. By studying the motion of carbon monoxide gas within the disk, the astronomers showed it was being moved by massive objects living in those gaps — a telltale sign of newborn planets. These findings were published in a pair of articles in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

[Read the rest at Forbes…]