Parabolic Flight Experiments Delve into Planetary Formation

Planets are thought to grow from dust grains in a protoplanetary disk to form larger and larger objects, eventually creating planets. This illustration from European Southern Observatory is an artist's concept of a typical disk of gas and dust around a newborn star.

What happens in a protoplanetary disk to create planetesimals around a star? We know the general story -- the material begins to clump together and eventually grows from dust grains to rocky bodies capable of sticking together to make planets. But, how does that dust begin the aggregation journey? That's what a research team from the Switzerland wanted to know. So, they did experiments aboard parabolic micro-gravity flights to find an answer.

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