Astronomers are getting a fresh look at what may be the early stages of planetary system formation. Recent pictures by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope don't show actual planets, but rather edge-on disks that provide some of the clearest views to date of potential planetary construction zones. The photos may hold clues to what happened some 4.5 billion years ago when the Earth and the other planets in the Solar System condensed out of a similar pancake-shaped disk around our young Sun.

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