Thursday, March 16, 2017
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Funds Research on Planetary Evolution
An enormous young planet approximately 300 light-years from Earth has given astrophysicists a rare glimpse into planetary evolution.
The planet, known as HD 106906b, was discovered in 2014 by a team of scientists from the U.S., the Netherlands and Italy. It is 11 times the mass of Jupiter and is extremely young by celestial standards - not more than 13 million years old, compared with our solar system's 4.6 billion years.
"This is such a young star; we have a snapshot of a baby star that just formed its planetary system - a rare peek at the final stage of planet formation," said Smadar Naoz, a UCLA assistant professor of physics and astronomy, and a co-author of the study...