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Science 7 January 2005:
Vol. 307. no. 5706, pp. 68 - 71
DOI: 10.1126/science.1101979
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Review

Disks Around Stars and the Growth of Planetary Systems

Jane S. Greaves

Circumstellar disks play a vital evolutionary role, providing a way to move gas inward and onto a young star. The outward transfer of angular momentum allows the star to contract without breaking up, and the remnant disk of gas and particles is the reservoir for forming planets. High-resolution spectroscopy is uncovering planetary dynamics and motion within the remnant disk, and imaging at infrared to millimeter wavelengths resolves disk structure over billions of years of evolution. Most stars are born with a disk, and models of planet formation need to form such bodies from the disk material within the disk's 10-million-year life-span.

Physics and Astronomy, University of St. Andrews, North Haugh, St. Andrews, Fife KY16 9SS, UK.

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Anatomy of a Flaring Proto-Planetary Disk Around a Young Intermediate-Mass Star.
P.-O. Lagage, C. Doucet, E. Pantin, E. Habart, G. Duchene, F. Menard, C. Pinte, S. Charnoz, and J.-W. Pel (2006)
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Inaugural Article: Interstellar Chemistry Special Feature: Chemistry in low-mass protostellar and protoplanetary regions.
E. F. van Dishoeck (2006)
PNAS 103, 12249-12256
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
The Kuiper Belt and the Solar System's Comet Disk.
B. Gladman (2005)
Science 307, 71-75
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
From Stars to Dust: Looking into a Circumstellar Disk Through Chondritic Meteorites.
H. C. Connolly Jr. (2005)
Science 307, 75-76
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)