Utilizing the Very Large Array, astronomers have found previously-unseen binary companions to a pair of very young protostars. According to a news release from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the finding offers a major boost for one of the competing theories for how double-star systems develop.

For years, astronomers have questioned how double or multiple-star systems are formed.

“The only way to resolve the debate is to observe very young stellar systems and catch them in the act of formation,” posited John Tobin, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, in a statement. “That’s what we’ve done with the stars we observed, and we got valuable new clues from them.”

Their new evidence backs up the theory that double-star systems develop when a disk of gas and dust spinning around one star fragments, developing another new star in orbit with the first. Young stars that still are collecting matter from their environment develop such disks, along with jet-like outflows quickly launching material in narrow beams perpendicular to the disk.

When the astronomers examined gas-cloaked young stars approximately 1,000 light-years from Earth, they discovered that two had previously-unseen companions in the plane where their disks would be expected, perpendicular to the direction of the outflows from the systems.

“This fits the theoretical model of companions forming from fragmentation in the disk,” Tobin noted. “This configuration would not be required by alternative explanations,” he added.

The study’s results are discussed in greater detail in the Astrophysical Journal.