Planets: Let them cook!⁣ ⁣ A NASAHubble study from 2003 suggested that the gigantic disks that gave rise to planets in the early universe were longer-lived than they should be, given the conditions of their environment. Old stars don’t have enough of the heavier elements that are necessary ingredients to form the planets. But how are they still able to cook at the ripe old age of 20 to 30 million years?⁣ ⁣ To answer this question, researchers used NASAWebb to study stars in a nearby galaxy that, much like the early universe, lacks large amounts of heavy elements. The circles in the second image show the positions of the 10 stars surveyed. The researchers found that not only do some stars there have planet-forming disks, but that those disks are longer-lived than those seen around young stars in our Milky Way galaxy—confirming Hubble’s original findings.⁣ ⁣ Image descriptions: ⁣ 1. The center of the image contains arcs of orange and pink that form a boat-like shape. One end of these arc...