What's the recipe for a planet?
Planets form within a "disk" of dust and gaseous material surrounding young stars, as shown in this NASA illustration.
October 20th, 2011
02:00 PM ET
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What's the recipe for a planet?

A discovery announced Thursday by the European Space Agency's orbiting Herschel observatory may reveal more about what ingredients it takes to cook up a new planet.

When stars are formed, they often leave a so-called "planet-forming disk" - shaped kind of like a pizza pie - with the star located in its hot center.

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Filed under: Discoveries • In Space

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