Some very cool images here. I do note that the first image, it looked like I could count 5-7 blue areas. Not sure how to interpret these blue clumps. Are they all separate gas giants forming? I note the space.com report stated, "With ALMA, it became apparent that the spiral arms are undergoing fragmentation, resulting in the formation of clumps with masses akin to those of planets," Zurlo said."
Here is a simulation report on possible processes like this in discs. Do all gaps in protoplanetary discs host planets?,
https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.11172
"...We locate the planets in the positions where the gaps in protoplanetary discs have been observed and we evolve the systems for 100Myr including a few Myr of gas disc evolution, while also testing three values of α viscosity. For planetary systems with initially three and four planets we find that most of the growing planets lie beyond the RV detection limit of 5AU and only a small fraction of them migrate into the inner region. We also find that these systems have too low final eccentricities to be in agreement with the observed giant planet population. Systems initially consisting of five or seven planets become unstable after ≈40Kyr of integration time. This clearly shows that not every gap can host a planet."
My note, the blue clumps seen in this article, perhaps very unstable conditions are developing too in the spiral arms.
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