Recently Discovered 'Baby' Alien Planets Can Solve Planet Formation Puzzle

So far, NASA's Kepler space telescope has helped astronomers discover thousands of exoplanets. But the two newly discovered exoplanets are nothing like anything discovered before - they are just a few million years old and can be comfortably regarded as "planetary infants."

The young age of the recently discovered exoplanets can be assessed by a comparison with the age of the Earth, which is around 4.5 billion years old. Despite the huge age, Earth is considered to be a middle-aged planet. This indicates to the fact that the new exoplanets discovered by the researchers are just babies.

One of the exoplanets discovered by the team, dubbed K2-33b, is estimated to be just 5 to 10 million years old. According to Trevor David, the first author of the study from the California Institute of Technology "the planet K2-33b would be an infant of only a few weeks old," by comparison to Earth.

The other planet, dubbed V830 Tau, is even younger than the first one. According to the researchers, V830 Tau has been just 2 million years old. The discovery of both these exoplanets is considered to be a remarkable milestone in the exoplanet science.

Planets such as V830 Tau and K2-33b can be effectively used by the researchers as a tool to understand how planet formation takes place. This can help researchers understand the processes that led to the formation of Earth and the origin of life on the planet.

The researchers are aware of the fact that planets are born of dust and gas that surrounds the young stars as they form. The dust forms a protoplanetary disk and after a few million years, the material comes together to form asteroids, comets, rocky planets or some other form of cosmic material.

The complete details of the study have been published in the journal Nature.