Dr Jane Greaves of the University of St Andrews, and her team, using the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in the US, have discovered what may be a young planet forming from the disk of gas and rocky particles around the star HL Tau. The star is thought to be less than 100000 years old and lies in the constellation of Taurus at a distance of 520 light years. Read more
Planets can apparently undergo hot and cold formations. It is believed that our solar system had a cold formation (where the sun ignites after some planet formation) so that gas giants can form fairly close to the star without their basic material being blown away by the solar wind of a hot new star.
