Galway lecturer part of space research to shed new light on formation of planets

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Dr Christian Ginski, lecturer at the University of Galway, helped capture images of more than 80 young stars and discs of dust and gas where planets are forming. Once we know that we can begin to figure out how often we get something like our own solar system that has the conditions for life to emerge.” The team studied 86 stars across three different star-forming regions of the Milky Way galaxy: Taurus and Chamaeleon I, both around 600 light years from Earth, and Orion, a gas-rich cloud about 1,300 light years away that is known to be the birthplace of several stars bigger than the Sun. We are looking at these young birth places of planets because we want to understand why we are finding so many planetary systems around distant stars that are extremely diverse in their architecture Dr Christian Ginski To date, more than 5,000 planets have been discovered orbiting stars other than the Sun, often within systems markedly different from the Solar System. Dr Ginski added: “We are looking at these young birth places of planets because we want to understand why we are finding so many planetary systems around distant stars that are extremely diverse in their architecture and, mostly, very different from our solar system.