Mysterious sharp symmetric features detected around young double star

(Phys.org)—An international team of astronomers, led by Markus Janson of Stockholm University in Sweden, has discovered mysterious sharp symmetric features around young double star, named AK Sco. The discovery is baffling scientists as they are still unsure about the nature of these features, pondering the possibilities that they are highly eccentric rings or two separate spiral arms in the disk around the star. Moreover, these features may have been caused by circumbinary planets interacting with the disk. The results were published on Dec. 14 in the arXiv journal.