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LiveScience
LiveScience
Harry Baker

'Ridiculously smooth': James Webb telescope spies unusual pancake-like disk around nearby star Vega — and scientists can't explain it

Vega James Webb Earth University of Arizona Fomalhaut The Astrophysical Journal the University of Arizona
A perfectly smooth disk of dust surrounds a star in an orange-color infrared image.

A nearby star is surrounded by an eerily perfect, "pancake-like" disk of cosmic debris that is unlike anything seen before, new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) images reveal. The surprisingly smooth disk hints that no exoplanets have formed around the star, named Vega, and researchers have no idea why.

The findings could upend our understanding of how alien worlds form.

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