Press Release “ A Drastic Chemical Change Occurring in Birth

3. Presenters:Nami Sakai, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo Satoshi Yamamoto, Professor, Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo 4. Key Points Background: A new star and its planetary system are formed through gravitational collapse of interstellar gas and dust. It has so far been believed that interstellar matter is smoothly brought into a gas disk forming a planetary system as it is. Result: A drastic chemical change associated with formation of the disk around a young protostar has been discovered with ALMA. Infalling gas is jammed up due to centrifugal force around the outer edge of the disk, where local heating causes a drastic chemical change. Outlook: The Solar system may also have experienced it. It is very interesting to explore how the observed phenomenon is general in planetary system formation, and also how it affected the pre-solar materials found in meteorites.