October 10, 2008--An artist's impression portrays a hungry young star and the disks of gas and dust that feed its growth.

Data from ESO's Very Large Telescope suggests that disk material infalls onto new stars, and some gases are ejected from them during formation.

The (inner) gas disk is smaller than the distance from the Earth to the sun.

But the entire disk (not shown to scale) is tens of times bigger and may provide the raw materials for new planetary systems.