Misalignment of planetary orbits linked to warped disk
India TV NewsThe misalignment of planetary orbits in many planetary systems -- including our own -- may be caused by distortions in the planet-forming disk early in their existence, suggests new research. In the latest findings, published in the journal Nature, the researchers observed, for the first time, a warped disk around an exceptionally young star, or protostar, that formed just several tens of thousands of years ago. Using observations from the ALMA radio observatory in Chile, the team from the RIKEN CPR and Chiba University in Japan discovered that L1527, an infant protostar still embedded within a cloud, has a disk that has two parts - an inner one rotating in one plane, and an outer one in a different plane. "One possibility is that irregularities in the flow of gas and dust in the protostellar cloud are still preserved and manifest themselves as the warped disk," she said.
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