Out of this material are formed planetesimals, which can undergo an accretion process to form planets.

"Now we're saying that at least one half of all the young stars have at least the potential for forming planets," he said.

"A little disk that could form planets around an object that is small enough itself to be a planet."

The material in a disk, according to current theories of how our own solar system formed, gradually comes together to form planets.

When this was built, only a billion years after the Bang, there were scarcely any heavy elements to form planets.

The remaining materials are then believed to form planets and other planetary system objects.

It's a wide binary, but one of the stars has formed planets in stable orbits.

This supports theories that stars rich in heavy elements have the necessary ingredients to form planets.

This suggests that the presence of a companion star does not necessarily disrupt a disk before it has had enough time to form planets.

Local eddies, whirling frantically near the center of the storm, collapsed to form planets.