Scientists have discovered thousands of planets orbiting other stars, so it takes a particularly exciting discovery to make discovering a new planet stand out. A recent announcement, however, might just meet that threshold: scientists found four gigantic planets orbiting around a newborn star, in a cosmic first.
The star in question is called CI Tau, and lies around 500 light-years away from our own solar system. The star is around 2 million years old, which makes it practically a baby. In comparison, our own star is nearly 5 billion years old. CI Tau is so young that the material around it hasn't finished forming into planets; instead, that material forms a disk of dust and gas around the star called a protoplanetary disk.
Read Full Article »