A Peculiar Solar System Has Scientists Rethinking Theories Of How Planets Form

"An oddball solar system discovered not too far from our own is forcing astronomers to reexamine their ideas about how planets get created."

"In the journal Science, researchers report they detected a small, dim red dwarf star, about 30 light-years from Earth, being tugged by the gravity of what must be a huge, Jupiter-like planet."

"'It's a very large planet, for such a small star,' says Juan Carlos Morales, an astrophysicist at the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia in Barcelona who was part of the research team."

"It's so big, he says, that its existence can't be explained by the conventional wisdom about how solar systems develop."

'This is the surprising thing,' Morales says. 'We need another, an alternative formation scenario, to explain this system.'"

"Newly born stars are temporarily surrounded by a swirling disk of leftover gas and dust. Scientists have long thought that planets begin to grow when bits of solid material in this disk start to collide and sort of glom together."