The alien planet that was just found by astronomers is gigantic and bigger than any planetary body in the solar system.
The exoplanet, dubbed HD 106906 b, orbits its single parent star at an average of 650 times the distance between the Earth and the sun.
The large planet shocked astronomers and has provoked questions about how these types of planets are formed.
“This system is especially fascinating because no model of either planet or star formation fully explains what we see,” study lead researcher Vanessa Bailey, a fifth-year graduate student in the University of Arizona’s department of astronomy, said in a statement.
Planets close to their stars, such as Earth, form from small asteroid-like bodies, some astronomers believe. But this process would be too slow to explain the growth of giant planets that aren’t close to their star, like the alien planet that was just discovered.
Bailey and her team have developed several alternative theories, including formation like a mini binary star system.
A research paper on the subject will be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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