Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international team of astronomers announced the detection of 17 complex organic molecules (COMs) in a protoplanetary disk surrounding a distant star. This includes the first tentative detection of ethylene glycol (CH₂OH)₂ and glycolonitrile (HOCH₂CN), which are believed to be building blocks of amino acids and their precursors. While these molecules have been detected in space before, this is the first time scientists have observed them in a planet-forming disk around a protostar, which offers tantalizing clues about the origin of life in the Universe.

The team was led by Abubakar Fadul, a visiting scientist with the Department of Planet and Star Formation at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA). He was joined by fellow MPIA members and researchers from the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Columbia University, Purdue University, the University of California Berkeley, and the University of Michigan. The papers that describe their findings recently appeared online, in the Astronomical Journal, and the Astrophysical Journal (respectively).

The organic molecules they identified were found in the disk surrounding V883 Orionis, a protostar located about 1,350 light-years away in the constellation Orion. COMs are molecules with more than five atoms and at least one carbon atom. The detection of glycolonitrile is especially significant since it is a precursor in the amino acids glycine and alanine, and the nucleotide base adenine, one of the four that make up DNA and RNA. The discovery of COMs in the protoplanetary disk of V883 Orionis has helped resolve an enduring puzzle regarding the evolution of organic molecules in star systems.

Artist's impression of the water snowline around the young star V883 Orionis, as detected with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in 2016.

Credit: A. Angelich (NRAO/AUI/NSF)/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

The transition of a cold protostar to a young star with a protoplanetary disk is accompanied by a phase characterized by intense shockwaves and radiation that disturb gas and dust in the disk. These violent processes were thought to destroy most complex molecules that would have assembled very early in a system's history. This led scientists to propose the "reset scenario," where COMs would have to be recreated in the disks from which a system of planets, asteroids, and comets forms. As Kamber Schwarz, an MPIA scientist and co-author, explained in an MPIA press release:

Now it appears the opposite is true. Our results suggest that protoplanetary discs inherit complex molecules from earlier stages, and the formation of complex molecules can continue during the protoplanetary disk stage.

The main issue with the "reset scenario" is that COMs would not have enough time to form in significant amounts during a star's transition from the protostellar phase to a young star surrounded by a protoplanetary disk. In contrast, these findings suggest that the conditions that lead to biological processes are present early in solar evolution, rather than being restricted to individual planetary systems later. "Our finding points to a straight line of chemical enrichment and increasing complexity between interstellar clouds and fully evolved planetary systems," added Abubakar Fadul.

These findings also suggest that the abundance and complexity of COMs increase as protoplanetary disks evolve to become planetary systems, meaning that the building blocks of life are present in star systems from the earliest stages. In previous studies, astronomers identified simple organic molecules (like methanol) in stellar nurseries, the dense clouds of dust and gas that give birth to new stars. Said Tushar Suhasaria, a co-author and the head of MPIA's Origins of Life Lab, these same nurseries could contain complex compounds like those identified around V883 Orionis:

We recently found ethylene glycol could form by UV irradiation of ethanolamine, a molecule that was recently discovered in space. This finding supports the idea that ethylene glycol could form in those environments, but also in later stages of molecular evolution, where UV irradiation is dominant.

Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Meanwhile, amino acids, sugars, and nucleobases (which make up DNA and RNA) have been found in asteroids, meteorites, and comets within the Solar System. Since the chemical reactions that lead to COMs occur under cold conditions, these same molecules surely exist in greater abundances in their interiors. While these cannot be accessed without drilling, comets experience outgassing as they draw closer to the Sun. As they grow warmer from solar heating, comets will form tails (or haloes) of gas and dust, which astronomers can study to identify the spectral signatures of organic molecules.

This process also occurs in the V883 Orionis system, where the star is still accreting gas from the surrounding disk, eventually triggering a fusion reaction in its core. During this period, the gas is heated and releases intense bursts of radiation that are strong enough to heat the surrounding disk, releasing the organic molecules detected by the team. Said Schwartz:

Complex molecules, including ethylene glycol and glycolonitrile, radiate at radio frequencies. ALMA is perfectly suited to detect those signals. While this result is exciting, we still haven't disentangled all the signatures we found in our spectra. Higher resolution data will confirm the detections of ethylene glycol and glycolonitril, and maybe even reveal more complex chemicals we simply haven't identified yet.

These findings also present the opportunity for follow-up investigations that look for molecules in other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Astronomers could identify even more evolved molecules like amino acids. If this theory is confirmed, it would reveal how the ingredients for life were distributed throughout the early Solar System, which could provide clues as to where else it might be found.

Further Reading: 

• MPG

What can brine (extra salty) water teach scientists about finding past, or even present, life on Mars? This is what a recent study published in Communications Earth & Environment hopes to address as a researcher from the University of Arkansas investigated the formation of brines using 50-year-old data. This study has the potential to help researchers better understand how past data can be used to gain greater insights on the formation and evolution of surface brines on the surface of Mars.

For the study, Dr. Vincent Chevrier, who is an associate research professor at the University of Arkansas’ Center for Space and Planetary Sciences and sole author of the study, used a combination of meteorological data obtained from the Viking 2 lander and computer models to ascertain if melting frost during late winter and early spring on Mars could produce brines. Dr. Chevrier noted that Viking 2 data was used due to it being the sole mission in history to definitively detect, recognize, and analyze frost on Mars.

In the end, Dr. Chevrier found that during late winter and early spring, the upper latitudes of Mars where the Viking 2 lander is located experiences a one-month period where the surface temperature is approximately -75 degrees Celsius (-103 degrees Fahrenheit) in the early morning and late afternoon, enabling surface brines to briefly exist.

Dr. Chevrier notes in his conclusions, “Beyond the immediate implications for habitability, these results refine our understanding of Mars’ current water cycle. By demonstrating that even minimal frost deposits can contribute to transient brine formation, this study suggests that localized microenvironments might support intermittent liquid phases, influencing surface chemistry, regolith weathering, and even slope activity.”

Viking 2 landed in Utopia Planitia, which is a large plain in the northern latitudes of Mars at approximately 45 degrees north latitude and spanning approximately 3,300 kilometers (2,100 miles). For context, the location is the same as northern Oregon with Utopia Planitia’s size being just less than the width of the continental United States.

Utopia Planitia exhibits a top surface layer known as the latitude dependent mantle (LDM) that is comprised of a mixture of water ice and dust. The LDM is created during periods of high obliquity on Mars, approximately 45 degrees, when the planet’s axial tilt is at a greater angle than today, which currently sits at approximately 25 degrees, slightly greater than Earth’s 23.1-degree obliquity. While Earth has our Moon to stabilize our axial tilt, Mars does not have this stability, resulting in drastic swings over hundreds of thousands of years. During periods of high obliquity, the ice caps at both poles of Mars evaporate, releasing large quantities of frozen water ice, carbon, and dust, that gets deposited onto the high latitudes of Mars.

The water cycle that Dr. Chevrier mentions plays a role during periods of high obliquity and the LDM being deposited during these periods, as well. While obliquity isn’t mentioned in this study, the existence of brines in the high latitudes of Mars could offer clues to what processes occur during periods of high obliquity. Brines could also provide insights into the current habitability of Mars, as mentioned by Dr. Chevrier, while also enabling scientists to learn more about whether life could have existence on ancient Mars.

Dr. Chevrier notes in his conclusions, “Robotic landers equipped with in situ hygrometers and chemical sensors could target these seasonal windows to directly detect brine formation and constrain the timescales over which these liquids persist.”

What new discoveries about Mars surface brines will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

In 1976, NASA's Viking 1 and 2 missions landed on Mars and began conducting the first astrobiology studies on another planet. This involved the analysis of soil samples for possible indications of organic molecules and biological processes (aka. "biosignatures"). The results of these studies were inconclusive and led to a general sense of pessimism towards the idea that Mars ever hosted life. However, the presence of features that could only have formed in the presence of flowing water - flow channels, delta fans, hydrated minerals, etc. - led to renewed astrobiology efforts by the 1990s.

Since then, no less than 25 missions (a combination of orbiters, landers, and rovers) have been sent to Mars to learn more about its past and resume the search for biosignatures. These efforts have been bolstered by the discovery of Recurring Slope Lineae (RSL), which refers to dark linear features on steep slopes on Mars. These features appear to be seasonal in nature, appearing in summer and fading away during winter, which suggests the presence of liquid water. In a recent paper, Vincent Chevrier of the University of Arkansas (UArk) presents the most compelling evidence to date that seasonal brines occur on Mars.

Between the extreme variations in temperature and Mars' very low atmospheric pressure (less than 1% that of Earth), water cannot exist in a stable form on the surface. As such, the existence of RSLs remains a controversial issue for scientists. These "brines" are believed to result from seasonal melts mixing with the natural perchlorates in Martian soil. Assuming they can exist, these patches could host life in the form of single-celled microbes. According to the latest research by Vincent Chevrier, an associate research professor at UArk's Center for Space and Planetary Sciences,

Vincent Chevrier, an associate research professor at the University of Arkansas' Center for Space and Planetary Sciences.

Credit: UArk

Seasonal frosts are common on Mars and present the best chance for finding liquid brines. However, because of Mars' thin atmosphere, water tends to transition directly from ice and vapor without becoming a liquid (aka. sublimates). To investigate the possibility of liquid existing periodically in the form of brines, Chevrier consulted meteorological data collected by the Viking 2 mission, which landed in the Utopia Planitia region on September 3rd, 1976. Located in Mars' Northern Lowlands, this region is known to have permafrost and is believed to have once been covered by a planetwide ocean.

This was combined with data from the Mars Climate Database and computer modeling to determine if brines could form from melting frost for brief periods. Chevrier selected the Viking 2 data because it is the only mission to have clearly observed, identified, and characterized frost on Mars. Chevrier has spent the last 20 years studying Mars for signs of liquid water and has long suspected that perchlorates are the most promising salts for brine formation because of their extremely low salt-water melting point.

This includes brines composed of water and calcium perchlorate, which solidifies at -75 °C (-103 °F), whereas average surface temperatures on Mars range from 20 °C (68 °F) during the day to -153°C (-243°F) at night. Based on the climate modeling data, Chevrier determined there is a brief window lasting for one Martian month (roughly two months on Earth) between late winter and early spring when temperatures are right for the formation of brines. He further concluded that ideal temperatures are present between early morning and late afternoon, and are either too hot or too cold at other times.

These brines would be scarce, since calcium perchlorate accounts for about 1% of Martian regolith, and frosts that form in the Northern Lowlands are extremely thin. While these findings are not conclusive proof that brines exist on Mars, they do indicate that Mars could conceivably support life adapted to much colder, drier conditions. What's more, they offer a tantalizing prediction of what future missions to Mars could find and suggest that similar processes may occur in other frost-bearing regions, such as the mid-to-high latitudes.

• The paper that describes his findings was recently published in Nature Communications Earth and Environment.

Further Reading: 

• University of Arkansas, Nature Communications Earth and Environment

Next time you're drinking a frosty iced beverage, think about the structure of the frozen chunks chilling it down. Here on Earth, we generally see ice in many forms: cubes, sleet, snow, icicles, slabs covering lakes and rivers, and glaciers. Water ice does this thanks to its hexagonal crystal lattice. That makes it less dense than nonfrozen water, which allows it to float in a drink, in a lake, and on the ocean.

Water ice exists across the Solar System beyond Earth, and it’s abundant in the larger Universe. For example, it shows up in dense molecular clouds. These are star- and planet-forming crèches laced with water ice throughout, as well as in the resulting cometary nuclei. That material is called "low-density amorphous ice (LDA)" and it doesn’t have the same rigid structure as Earth ice does.

We all know that water is the basis for life on this planet. Despite how common it may appear across the Universe, scientists still don’t fully understand it. Studying amorphous ice may help explain its still-to-be-solved mysteries. Here in the Solar System, large amounts of LDA exist in the realm of the ice and gas giants, throughout the Kuiper Belt, and the Oort Cloud. A team of scientists at University College London investigated the form of this ice using computer simulations. They found that the simulations matched the makeup of ice that isn’t completely amorphous and has tiny crystals embedded within.

Jupiter's moon Ganymede is covered with water ice. It likely has a deep, subsurface ocean. Other moons in the Solar System, such as Enceladus, also show evidence of water ice and scientists are interested in the structure of that material.

Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kalleheikki Kannisto

What the Difference Means

Scientists long assumed that "space ice" would be "disordered" without the structure we see in ice on Earth. Why does the structure of ice matter? According to researcher Michael Davies, who led the research team, water ice plays a crucial role in materials and structures across the cosmos. “This is important as ice is involved in many cosmological processes,” he said, “for instance in how planets form, how galaxies evolve, and how matter moves around the Universe.” In addition, understanding the structure of this ice in comparison to ice that formed on Earth has implications for understanding other similar "ultrastable glass" substances that form similar to the way ice does.

Low-density water ice was first discovered in the 1930s and a high-density version was discovered in the 1980s. Davies and his team discovered medium-density amorphous ice in 2023. This is a form of water ice that has the same density as liquid water. Unlike the ice cubes in our theoretical drink, such water ice would neither sink nor float in water, which seems strange to us.

Davies’s team’s work also has interesting implications for a speculative theory called Panspermia. It looks at how life on Earth began and suggests that the building blocks of life came to the infant planet as part of a barrage of icy comets. LDA ice could have essentially been the carrier for material such as simple amino acids. However, according to Davies, that "flavor" of ice isn't likely the transporter of choice. “Our findings suggest this ice would be a less good transport material for these origin of life molecules,” he said. “That is because a partly crystalline structure has less space in which these ingredients could become embedded. The theory could still hold true, though, as there are amorphous regions in the ice where life’s building blocks could be trapped and stored.”

Testing the Water Ice

According to Davies, water ice is an important material not just for life, but for other uses. “Ice is potentially a high-performance material in space,” he said. “It could shield spacecraft from radiation or provide fuel in the form of hydrogen and oxygen. So we need to know about its various forms and properties.”

The research team used two computer models of water and froze these virtual “boxes” of water molecules by cooling to -120 °C at different rates. Those different rates had different results, creating varying amounts of crystalline and amorphous ice. The team also created larger boxes of water ice containing many small, closely packed ice crystals. Then, they heated the resulting ice so it could form crystals. Eventually, differences in the resulting crystals showed up, based on their original formation.

The result was an LDA ice with about a quarter of its mass in crystalline form. This was indirect evidence, they said, that low-density amorphous ice contained crystals. If it was fully disordered, the ice would not retain any memory of its earlier forms. The tests raise a lot of questions about the nature of amorphous ices and the role they play in processes such as planet formation. Davies’s co-author Professor Christoph Salzmann, of UCL Chemistry, described the difference between the very structured ice on Earth (and implications for its formation) and the amorphous ice in space. “Ice on Earth is a cosmological curiosity due to our warm temperatures,” he said. “You can see its ordered nature in the symmetry of a snowflake. Ice in the rest of the Universe has long been considered a snapshot of liquid water – that is, a disordered arrangement fixed in place.”

Implications

The result of the team’s simulations shows that the theory of liquid water going straight to a blob of amorphous ice isn’t completely true. Salzmann also suggests that the lab work they did could have important implications for other similar substances. “Our results also raise questions about amorphous materials in general,” he said. “These materials have important uses in much advanced technology. For instance, glass fibers that transport data long distances need to be amorphous, or disordered, for their function. If they do contain tiny crystals and we can remove them, this will improve their performance.”

In layperson’s terms, these substances beyond water ice are part and parcel of such technologies as OLEDs and fiber optics. In the future, an amorphous silicon, for example, could be studied in the same way and lead to major improvements in technologies that depend on the resulting ultrastable glasses.

For More Information

• Low-density Amorphous Ice Contains Crystalline Ice Grains

When rocket engines fire during lunar landings, they don't just kick up a little dust. They unleash massive clouds of high speed particles that behave like natural sandblasting jets, capable of damaging expensive equipment, solar panels, and even entire habitats. As space agencies prepare for permanent lunar settlements through programs like NASA's Artemis mission, understanding this phenomenon has become a matter of survival.

The mystery began during the Apollo era, when astronauts and mission controllers noticed something peculiar, the dust clouds didn't spread randomly. Instead, they formed distinctive streaks radiating outward from the landing site in regular patterns, like spokes on a wheel. The same patterns appeared again recently during Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander mission, proving this wasn't just an Apollo-era anomaly.

Apollo Apollo Lunar Module-5 Eagle as seen from CSM-107 Columbia

(Credit : NASA)

For years, no one could explain why these patterns formed so consistently. Now, a research team led by Rui Ni from Johns Hopkins University has cracked the code. Working with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and the University of Michigan, they discovered that the streaks result from something called the Görtler instability, a fluid dynamics phenomenon where curved exhaust flows create rotating vortices that organise the dust into those characteristic patterns.

The vacuum test chamber with its door open at NASA's Johnson Space Center

(Credit : NASA Johnson Space Centre)

To solve this puzzle, the researchers built a sophisticated experimental setup in NASA's 15 foot vacuum chamber. They used six cameras to track how gas jets interacted with simulated lunar soil in near vacuum conditions, mimicking the Moon's environment. This allowed them to observe crater formation and trace the paths of individual dust particles as they were blasted away from the surface.

"We discovered that the strikingly regular streak patterns seen during landings aren't caused by the chosen landing sites. Instead, they result from the behaviour of the supersonic rocket plume as it imprints on the granular surface. This effect is extremely pronounced on the Moon due to its near-vacuum environment.”

- Rui Ni from Johns Hopkins University.

The Moon's lack of atmosphere makes this problem much worse than it would be on Earth. Without air resistance to slow them down, dust particles can travel at tremendous speeds and distances. What might be a minor dust cloud on Earth becomes a dangerous projectile field on the moon.

This outcome of the study is essential for future lunar exploration. High speed lunar dust can damage landing gear, contaminate scientific instruments, reduce solar panel efficiency, and even pose risks to astronauts and their equipment. For permanent lunar bases to succeed, engineers need to understand and prepare for these dust storms.

By understanding how these dust plumes behave, mission planners can better predict where debris will land for future missions, design more resilient equipment, and develop strategies to protect critical infrastructure. They might position sensitive equipment away from predicted dust trajectories for example or design landing pads that minimise dust generation.

Source :

• Engineers study little-known hazard of lunar landings

Georgia State University’s Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA), a six-telescope interferometer, excels at studying stars. It's been observing them for 20 years and has contributed to 276 published papers. The University is celebrating its achievements so far, and underscoring how Georgia State evolved from an institution not known for research to one that's now considered a large research university.

GSU scientist Hal McAlister was the lead author for one of the first papers published based on CHARA data, and is now a Regents' Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at GSU. That paper was focused on the star Regulus, part of the Leo constellation and one of the brightest stars in the sky. "These first results from the CHARA Array provide the first interferometric measurement of gravity darkening in a rapidly rotating star and represent the first detection of gravity darkening in a star that is not a member of an eclipsing binary system," that paper state.

Since then, CHARA has contributed to astrophysics in many ways. It's measured the sizes of stars across a wide range of masses and evolutionary stages, and when combined with data from Gaia and Hipparcos, have let scientists study stellar evolution models more deeply and thoroughly. It's revealed the oblate shapes of rapidly-rotating stars and imaged features on their surface. It's resolved circumstellar disks around Be stars, made of material ejected from the stars themselves.

“It’s been a joy to witness CHARA grow to even greater heights thanks to the dedication of so many over the years,” McAlister said.

Theo ten Brummelaar was the lead author of the second paper published based on CHARA. It explained how the array worked and outlined how GSU planned to upgrade the array in the future. ten Brummelaar was director of the CHARA Array until his retirement in 2022.

"At the time, Georgia State University wasn’t the large research university it is now, and very few people thought we’d get the funding, let alone be successful at building the CHARA Array,” ten Brummelaar said of the early days of the project. “We were a very small team of people with little history of designing and building large instruments like this. Nevertheless, we had a great deal of support, both financial and moral, from the university, and now CHARA and GSU are leaders in the field of ground-based optical interferometry and the astrophysics it enables."

In our current age of exoplanet discovery, the nature of the stars they orbit is critically important to understanding the planets themselves. "Without understanding stars, we'll never understand planets," ten Brummelaar said in an interview.

This figure shows 693 stars. It's an HR diagram of stars, many of which host exoplanets, that was created using interferometry data from CHARA, as well as data from other sources. It's a great example of the contribution CHARA has made in its first 20 years.

Image Credit: Ashley Elliott 2024.

“We knew in 2005 that the array would open a new window on the universe,” said current CHARA Director Douglas Gies. “But it is astonishing how much the array has revealed to us about the stars and their lives.”

CHARA also excels at measuring rapidly-rotating stars. They push the boundaries of stellar physics, and anything that pushes Nature's boundaries can tell scientists a lot. Rapid rotators are known for gravity darkening.

These are some of the rapidly-rotating stars studied by CHARA. The rapid rotation deforms the stars into oblate shapes. That means the equators are further from the cores, and are cooler as a result. This is called gravity darkening, since the equators have less gravity than the poles.

Image Credit: CHARA Array/John Monnier

CHARA has also contributed to our understanding of Nova explosions. These occur in tight binaries where one star is a white dwarf. The white dwarf draws hydrogen away from its companion, where it builds up as a layer on the outside of the white dwarf. Eventually, the hydrogen explodes as a Nova, which is bright at first then slowly fades over months. CHARA has imaged the expanding fireballs that form immediately after the explosion. CHARA observations produced the first images of a Nova during the early fireball stage and revealed how the structure of the ejected material evolves as the gas expands and cools.

This research figure shows how the CHARA array was able to measure the expansion of a Nova fireball from Nova Delphinus 2013 (V339 Del). CHARA was able to show that there's more complexity in these events than thought. By measuring the expansion rate accurately, CHARA showed that a bipolar structure forms as early as the second day and indicates that the fireball is clumpy.

Image Credit: Schaefer et al. 2014, Nature, 515, 243

CHARA observing time is in high demand, and in 2024, the National Science Foundation granted CHARA $3.5 million to allow more researchers to access the array.

“The National Science Foundation award is the key to open the array to the best ideas about new avenues for research,” said Chara Director Gies. “There will be remarkable new results coming soon about stars, planets and distant active galaxies.”

CHARA has seen several upgrades in recent years. New instruments and cameras have increased its power considerably. In 2024, a seventh mobile telescope was added to the array. This is a key upgrade, since the other six are in fixed positions, and will help the array image the surfaces of even larger stars. It will increase the array's baseline from 330 meters to 550 meters. The seventh telescope is also a test case for further future development of the array.

“CHARA runs the best optical and infrared interferometer in the world and delivers the highest resolution observations possible at these wavelengths,” said Nigel Sharp, a program director in NSF’s Division of Astronomical Sciences. “It is exciting to see that such observations can be delivered routinely and that CHARA’s sought-after capabilities are now available to non-experts in the research community.”

Around three decades ago, we weren't certain that other stars had planets orbiting them. Scientists naturally thought there would be, but they had no evidence. Now, not only do we know of more than 6,000 confirmed exoplanets, but we can watch as baby planets take shape around distant stars.

When stars form, they're surrounded by rotating disks of gas and dust called protoplanetary disks. Planets form in these disks, and in recent years, ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array has examined many of these disks. It's made headlines by finding telltale signs of planets forming, as they seem to clear orbital paths in the disks.

This image shows some of the protoplanetary disks imaged by ALMA. The gaps and rings show where planets are forming and creating lanes in the gas and dust.

Image Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), S. Andrews et al.; NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello

Other telescopes have studied these young protoplanetary disks, too, and uncovered their own evidence of planets forming. Astronomers working with the ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) and its SPHERE instrument found spiral arm patterns in the disk around the star HD 135344B. While those patterns suggest the presence of a planet, there was no direct evidence.

The SPHERE instrument on the ESO's Very Large Telescope observed these spiral arm patterns around HD 135344B. This instrument suggested the presence of a planet, but didn't provide any direct evidence that one was there. The central black region shows how the star itself is blocked by the telescope's coronagraph.

Image Credit: ESO/T. Stolker et al.

Now astronomers working with another of the VLT's instruments, the Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph, may have found direct evidence of a gas giant forming around the star. The discovery is presented in a research letter titled "Unveiling a protoplanet candidate embedded in the HD 135344B disk with VLT/ERIS" published in Astronomy and Astrophysics. The lead author is Francesco Maio, a doctoral researcher at the University of Florence, Italy.

"High-angular-resolution observations in infrared and millimeter wavelengths of protoplanetary disks have revealed cavities, gaps, and spirals," the authors write in their research. "One proposed mechanism to explain these structures is the dynamical perturbation caused by giant protoplanets."

Previous research examined the disk around HD 135344B. ALMA observations revealed spiral arms and hints of a massive planet forming, and other features like a blob. This research has refined those observations with more powerful instruments.

"We identified the previously detected S1, S2, S2a spiral arms and the “blob” features southward of the star," they added. They also found a new point source at the base of the S2 spiral arm. They identify it as a gas giant with about 2 Jupiter masses.

This figure shows the two spiral arms and the candidate companion. The shadow, marked by the arrow, is also evident, along with a fully shadowed region highlighted by the horizontal solid line. This visualization of the shadows further confirms the extended nature of the blob south of the star and highlights that it is part of the S2 spiral interrupted by the shadow.

Image Credit: Maio et al. 2025. A&A

These observations are markedly different from previous observations showing the telltale gaps carved out by exoplanets. With those images, researchers could only deduce that planets created them. And when it comes to spirals, there were other potential explanations, too. "Spiral arms can also be explained by other mechanisms not involving an external perturber," the researchers write, explaining that gravitational instability could potentially create the arms, as could shadows. A 2021 paper explained that asymmetries in circumstellar disks can cast shadows on other regions of the disk. Those shadows create regions of low pressure that could trigger the formation of spirals.

But this time, astronomers have detected light signals from the planet itself.

“What makes this detection potentially a turning point is that, unlike many previous observations, we are able to directly detect the signal of the protoplanet, which is still highly embedded in the disc,” says Maio, who is based at the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, a centre of Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF). “This gives us a much higher level of confidence in the planet’s existence, as we’re observing the planet’s own light.”

This system is 440 light years away, and the planet is about twice as large as Jupiter. It's about as far away from its star as Neptune is from the Sun (~4.5 billion km).

A different group of researchers have also discovered spiral arms in the disk around another star. It's named V960 Mon, and the researchers used the ERIS instrument on the VLT to observe it. They say they discovered a companion object forming in the disk, and their discovery is in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. It's titled "VLT/ERIS Observations of the V960 Mon System: A Dust-embedded Substellar Object Formed by Gravitational Instability?" and the lead author is Anuroop Dasgupta from the European Southern Observatory.

"V960 Mon is an FU Orionis object that shows strong evidence of a gravitationally unstable spiral arm that is fragmenting into several dust clumps. We report the discovery of a new substellar companion candidate around this young star," the researchers report. It's deeply embedded in the disk, and is close to some previously reported clumps in the disk around V960 Mons. "This candidate may represent an actively accreting, disk-bearing substellar object in a young, gravitationally unstable environment," they write.

The object could be one million years old and have 660 Jupiter masses.

This image shows a possible companion orbiting the young star V960 Mon. Previous analysis of the disc showed that it contains clumps of unstable material that could collapse to form a companion object. The new candidate found here could be either a planet or a brown dwarf.

Image Credit: ESO/A. Dasgupta/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Weber et al.

This work adds to previous research that identified spiral arms around V960 Mons. That research also found clumps that could be portions of the spiral undergoing gravitational instability and possibly forming planets. "Estimating the mass of solids within these clumps to be of several Earth masses, we suggest this observation to be the first evidence of gravitational instability occurring on planetary scales," those authors wrote.

That research set the stage for Dasgupta and his co-researchers to search for and find more direct evidence of a companion forming in the disk.

“That work revealed unstable material but left open the question of what happens next. With ERIS, we set out to find any compact, luminous fragments signaling the presence of a companion in the disc — and we did,” says Dasgupta. However, they aren't sure if it's a planet or a brown dwarf.

This is a VLT/ERIS image of V960 Mon. The left panel shows the binary star embedded in its environment, marking the detection of V960 Mon N and V960 Mon NE. The right panel shows a zoom-in onto V960 Mon, overlaid with ALMA contours, and the candidate object.

Image Credit: ESO/A. Dasgupta/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Weber et al.*

This detection is important because if it's confirmed, it could be the first direct evidence of planets forming through gravitational instability (GI). The core accretion theory is more widely accepted, but gravitational instability could better explain how Jupiter mass planets could form quickly, and further from their stars.

These two systems and their spirals are linked with GI. Astronomers think they support the GI formation model, but differentiating between the two processes in distant disks is challenging.

The quest to observe planets as they're still forming is linked to our strong desire to understand how our planet formed. Intellectual curiosity drives us to look at our surroundings and wonder how everything got this way. There are many unresolved questions about how Earth formed, and by watching as other planets form, we may be able to uncover some answers.

“We will never witness the formation of Earth, but here, around a young star 440 light-years away, we may be watching a planet come into existence in real time,” said Maio.