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NASA Discovers Youngest Planet in the Universe, (with PHOTO)

NASA Discovers Youngest Planet in the Universe

NASA announced its discovery of the youngest planet ever found. The baby planet is about a million years old, but in cosmic terms it is considered to be a mere infant.
The discovery was made with NASA'a infrared Spitzer space telescope, which is able to discern entities in space through the cosmic dust clouds that would normally obscure the view of other telescopes.

According to NASA, Spitzer surveyed a group of young stars and found intriguing evidence that one of them may have the youngest planet detected. The observatory found a clearing in the disc around the star CoKu Tau 4. This might indicate an orbiting planet swept away the disc material, like a vacuum leaving a cleared trail on a dirty carpet.

Understanding How Stars and Planets Form

The new findings reveal the structure of the gap more clearly than ever before. Because CoKu Tau 4 is about one million years old, the possible planet would be even younger. As a comparison, Earth is approximately 4.5-billion years old.

"These early results show Spitzer will dramatically expand our understanding of how stars and planets form, which ultimately helps us understand our origins," said Dr. Michael Werner, Spitzer project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif., which manages the mission.

Planet-forming, or "protoplanetary," discs are a natural phase in a star's life. A star is born inside a dense envelope of gas and dust. Within this envelope, and circling the star, is a flat, dusty disc, where planets are born.

"By seeing what's behind the dust, Spitzer has shown us star and planet formation is a very active process in our galaxy," Churchwell said.

Hubble's Replacement

Previously, the "youngest" planets discovered have been several billion years old, much like Earth itself.

The Spitzer telescope was launched by NASA last summer as a successor to the famed Hubble telescope. Since its deployment, NASA scientists have been extremely pleased with its advanced capabilities.

NASA explains that Spitzer's exquisitely sensitive infrared eyes can see planet-forming discs in great detail. "Previously, scientists could study only a small sample of discs, but Spitzer is already on its way toward analyzing thousands of discs," Werner said.

Spitzer's infrared spectrograph instrument, which breaks apart infrared light to see the signatures of various chemicals, was used to observe the organic ices and the clearing within CoKu Tau 4's disc.

Mon May 31