Alien planet discovered that is rapidly forming.

(CLO) Astronomers have just discovered a new planet orbiting a young star that took only 3 million years to form, a discovery that challenges current understanding of planet formation rates.

This "newborn" planet is estimated to have a mass about 10 to 20 times that of Earth, making it one of the youngest exoplanets ever discovered. This exoplanet sits next to the remnants of a dense disk of gas and dust surrounding its host star, providing the components for planet formation.

The star it orbits is expected to become an orange dwarf, less hot and with about 70% the mass of the Sun, and half the brightness of the Sun. It is located in the Milky Way, about 520 light-years from Earth. A light-year is 9.5 trillion kilometers.

"This finding confirms that planets can remain in a cohesive state for up to 3 million years, something previously unknown because Earth took 10 to 20 million years to form," said Madyson Barber, a graduate student in physics and astronomy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) and lead author of the study.

An illustration of a planet and its host star. Photo: NASA

This planet, named IRAS 04125+2902 b and TIDYE-1b, orbits its star every 8.8 days. Its distance from its host star is about 20% of the distance between Mercury and the Sun. It is less dense than Earth and has a diameter about 11 times larger. Its chemical composition is unknown.

Researchers suspect this planet formed further away from its star and then moved inward, as forming large planets close to stars is difficult.

This planet was discovered by the TESS space telescope, or NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. "This is the youngest known transit planet," Barber said.

Stars and planets form from clouds of gas and dust between stars. "To form a star-planet system, the cloud of gas and dust collapses and spins into a flat medium, with the star at the center and a disk surrounding it. Planets will form within that disk. Then, the disk dissipates starting from the inner region near the star," Barber explained.

Ngoc Anh (according to Reuters)

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