Youngest known planet discovered, breaking formation theories

Astronomers have confirmed the discovery of Elias 224 b, a Jupiter-mass exoplanet less than 1 million years old, making it the youngest known planet. The finding, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, challenges existing models of planet formation, which predicted such a large planet could not form so quickly at its distance from its star. The planet was identified by a team led by Andrea Bernardi, a doctoral candidate at the Universidad Diego Portales in Chile. Researchers used archival data from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to confirm the object's existence and planetary motion. The discovery builds on earlier observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, which had detected a gap in the protoplanetary disk around the star Elias 224 and a faint point of light within it. "The planets should be found within the gaps, since they are carving them," Bernardi said. "And that's exactly where we found Elias 224 b." Located approximately 450 light-years from Earth, Elias 224 b is estimated to be between two and four times as massive as Jupiter.