How do planets form?
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A scientific triumph?
Primordial clouds of dust and gas that form planets, in the Orion Nebula.
Until that is, astronomers confronted it with planets fromoutsideour solar system.
When such a clump gets big enough, it reaches a tipping point.
A big crunch
However, there are some things core accretion cant explain.
Massive planets have been spotted orbiting far from their host stars, out in the cold distant reaches.
According to the core accretion theory, such planets should not exist.
They are too far out, where orbits move too slowly to spin up the business of planet-building.
A new gravitational collapse model was formulatedto explain these unexpected massive distant planets.
But until now, evidence of a forming planet was missing.
This discovery thus provides strong evidence for the alternative theory of gravitational collapse.
It is this glow that gives away the presence of the planet.
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