Scientists find baby planet that formed way faster than Earth
Space researchers spotted an infant planet thats only 3 million years old near a young star 520 light-years away. This quick-forming world challenges what we knew about how fast planets can come together
A ground-breaking space discovery shows how planets can form much quicker than we thought. Scientists found a super-young planet that took just 3 million years to form - way faster than Earths 10-20 million year formation period
The newly-found world (which sits about 520 light years from us) is quite big - somewhere between 10 and 20 times Earthʼs mass. Its currently orbiting a not-so-bright star thats only 70% as big as our Sun
This discovery confirms that planets can be in a cohesive form within 3 million years‚ which was previously unclear
The planet named TIDYE-1b circles its star every 8‚8 days at a distance thats just one-fifth of Mercuryʼs orbit from the Sun. Scientists think it started forming much further out and moved inward - which explains how it got so big so fast. Its density is lower than Earths but its diameter is 11 times bigger
The discovery happened because of a weird twist: the planets disk is warped in a way that let researchers see it using NASAʼs TESS telescope. This finding is special because most super-young planets are too hidden by their birth-disks to spot them this way. Andrew Mann‚ another researcher points out that we still dont know if planets usually take 1‚ 5 or even 10 million years to form
