Apr 1, 2026 · 51 min · 11 segments
Just how much do we know about how the planets formed? How much of this can we learn from getting images of young solar systems? Why does it help to look at the disk using radio waves instead of…
Charles LawGuestPaul DuffellHostWe said a little bit hard about a little bit, but let me, uh, how I like to start is with this is, this is the question I like to ask to start it off, which is when you meet a new grad student or a fellow scientist and they ask you what you work on, what do you tell them?
which is another word for the disks of gas and dust and ice from which planets form, assemble, acquire their composition.
It is really the last stage in the overall sequence of star and planet formation that you have primordial reservoirs of gas and dust that are going to end up actually forming your planet.
So it's really, I think of it as the last step along the way to form another world.
Okay, so maybe what we'll do, I like to do, because I like to think, I like to go, maybe since you said the last step, Maybe we should describe what are the steps to forming a star? Because I'm sure you've gone over this many times before when giving talks and things like that.
So essentially you start with a, well, the thing you want at the end, right, is a fully fledged planetary system,
right? Like
And there are certain regions within these molecular clouds that are slightly overdense.
Gravity, if you just sort of kick the region a little bit, they'll start collapsing under their own gravity.
And if you have enough material collapsing vigorously enough at the very center, you're going to put enough material to eventually form something that's a star, a so-called protostar.
so that region that's that sort of dense region that's over dense region that's starting to then collapse all that material that's collapsing is eventually the material that's going to be forming the star and the planets and everything yes absolutely
so it's all together discs planets stars all sort of form us from the same reservoir of material we are that's from that stuff
Okay, so that's the first step is this basically this one portion of a giant molecular cloud starts to collapse and the center of it starts to get this very high density thing that ends up becoming this will eventually be the star.
We said a little bit hard about a little bit, but let me, uh, how I like to start is with this is, this is the question I like to ask to start it off, which is when you meet a new grad student or a fellow scientist and they ask you what you work on, what do you tell them?
which is another word for the disks of gas and dust and ice from which planets form, assemble, acquire their composition.
It is really the last stage in the overall sequence of star and planet formation that you have primordial reservoirs of gas and dust that are going to end up actually forming your planet.
So it's really, I think of it as the last step along the way to form another world.
Okay, so maybe what we'll do, I like to do, because I like to think, I like to go, maybe since you said the last step, Maybe we should describe what are the steps to forming a star? Because I'm sure you've gone over this many times before when giving talks and things like that.
So essentially you start with a, well, the thing you want at the end, right, is a fully fledged planetary system,
right? Like
And there are certain regions within these molecular clouds that are slightly overdense.
Gravity, if you just sort of kick the region a little bit, they'll start collapsing under their own gravity.
And if you have enough material collapsing vigorously enough at the very center, you're going to put enough material to eventually form something that's a star, a so-called protostar.
so that region that's that sort of dense region that's over dense region that's starting to then collapse all that material that's collapsing is eventually the material that's going to be forming the star and the planets and everything yes absolutely
so it's all together discs planets stars all sort of form us from the same reservoir of material we are that's from that stuff
Okay, so that's the first step is this basically this one portion of a giant molecular cloud starts to collapse and the center of it starts to get this very high density thing that ends up becoming this will eventually be the star.
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