'Evidence suggests that this is the earliest stage of formation ever observed for a gas giant.'
gloAn artist's illustration shows a massive, newly forming exoplanet called AB Aurigae b.WASHINGTON - Scientists have observed an enormous planet about nine times the mass of Jupiter at a remarkably early stage of formation - describing it as still in the womb - in a discovery that challenges the current understanding of planetary formation.
It is embedded in an expansive disk of gas and dust, bearing the material that forms planets, that surrounds a star called AB Aurigae located 508 light years - the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles - from Earth. This star got a fleeting moment of fame when its image appeared in a scene in the 2021 film "Don't Look Up."
Almost all known exoplanets have orbits around their stars within the distance that separates our sun and its most faraway planet Neptune. But this planet orbits three times as far as Neptune from the sun and 93 times Earth's distance from the sun.Its birth appears to be following a different process than the standard planetary formation model.
"This process cannot form giant planets at large orbital distance, so this discovery challenges our understanding of planet formation," Guyon said.
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