Warped Debris Disks Around Stars Are Blowin’ in the Wind

The dust-filled disks where new planets may be forming around other stars occasionally take on some difficult-to-understand shapes. Now, a team led by John Debes at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., finds that a star's motion through interstellar gas can account for many of them."The disks contain small comet- or asteroid-like bodies that may grow to form planets," Debes said.