A new map of baby solar systems shows that almost every single one of them is warped or 'broken' instead of being a nice, flat disk.
arXiv · March 16, 2026 · 2603.13015
Why it matters
We often imagine infant solar systems as neat, flat, rotating disks of dust. These high-resolution images show that they are actually filled with chaotic spirals, 'wobbles,' and warps, suggesting that the birth of planets is far more messy than our basic models suggest.
From the abstract
Protoplanetary disks are the birthplaces of planetary systems, and deviations from Keplerian rotation imprinted in disk gas kinematics serve as key tracers of physical processes and the presence of protoplanets within disks. Using the the CO (J=3-2) data from the exoALMA Large Program encompassing 15 disks, we constructed two-dimensional (2D) maps of centroid velocity, line width, and peak intensity, and extracted non-Keplerian deviations by subtracting smooth Keplerian models. This paper provid