Planets form quickly

摘要

In November 2003, Anne-Marie Lagrange at the Astrophysical Laboratory of Grenoble in France and her colleagues spotted a faint object just to the north-east of the young star |3 Pictoris. At the time, they were unsurernwhether it was a planet or a background star.rnNow they have made follow-up observations and found a comparable object to the star's south-west, a clear sign that it is an orbiting planet. The planet's mass is roughly nine times that of Jupiter, and it has cut a swath through the disk of debris surrounding the young star.