How Dust Disks Dance Around Newborn Stars
Around a just-ignited star swirls a vortex of dust and gas. This vortex, the protoplanetary disk, grows by accreting material from the surrounding cloud.
Stone Clusters from the Early Solar System
In the cold depths of space float rocks older than Earth itself. Inside some of them hide tiny glassy spheres — chondrules. They formed when a disk of gas and dust still swirled around the young Sun.
Carbonaceous meteorites Asuka 12236, Paris, and Maribo have preserved these spheres almost untouched.