An artist’s concept of a protoplanetary disc
Astronomers may have captured the best view yet of matter colliding with the surface of a young star, findings that could shed light on what the Sun looked like in its youth. Newborn stars are surrounded by a disc of gas and dust from which planets, asteroids, comets and moons are born. The star’s magnetic field connects the star with this protoplanetary disc, “funnelling material from the disc onto the star,” said Catherine Espaillat, an astrophysicist at Boston University.