Astronomers Just Found the Youngest Planet Ever Seen. It Shouldn’t Be So Huge
Astronomers have confirmed the discovery of Elias 2-24 b, the youngest known planet, which is less than a million years old. This Jupiter-sized object is located significantly farther from its host star than Jupiter is from the Sun, challenging existing models of planet formation. The finding, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, provides a rare opportunity to study the earliest stages of planetary evolution.
- ▪Elias 2-24 b is the youngest planet ever discovered, with an estimated age of less than one million years.
- ▪The planet is located approximately 11 times farther from its host star than Jupiter is from the Sun, which contradicts current formation timelines.
- ▪Researchers confirmed the planet's existence by analyzing archival observations from the W. M. Keck Observatory between 2018 and 2020.
- ▪The discovery highlights the limitations of current theoretical models, which struggle to explain how such a massive planet forms so quickly at such a distance.
- ▪Future observations with NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope are expected to make detecting similar infant planets easier.
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| Publication time | Fri, 18 Sep 2026 16:30:03 +0000 |
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For a decade, astronomers have debated whether a planet is taking shape in the dusty disk surrounding Elias 2-24, a young star located about 450 light years from Earth. The first clue was a gap in the disk spotted by the ALMA observatory in Chile, followed by the European Southern Observatory’s detection of a faint point of light sitting in that gap. There was a problem, however. According to planet formation models, it takes about 5 million years for a Jupiter-sized planet to form at Jupiter’s distance from the Sun. The farther a planet is from its star, the longer it takes to grow. But this glowing dot was roughly 11 times farther from Elias 2-24 than Jupiter is from the Sun, and it was already behaving like a forming planet.
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