Astronomers have made a rare discovery deep in the universe. A planet that is only 3 million years old and called ‘TIDYE-1b’ or ‘IRAS 04125+2902 b’ has been discovered. TIDYE-1b is approximately 1,500 times younger than the 4.5 billion-year-old Earth.
“Astronomy helps us understand our place in the universe, where we came from, and where we might be going,” said Madyson Barber, a graduate student at the University of North Carolina (UNC-Chapel Hill) and lead author of the study. “The discovery of planets like TIDYE-1b allows us to travel back in time to planet formation,” he said.
Barber and his team detected TIDYE-1b by transit using NASA’s TESS telescope. This method allows the presence of a planet to be determined by slightly dimming starlight as it passes in front of its star.
Associate Professor from UNC-Chapel Hill. Dr. Andrew Mann said: “Planets are generally formed in a flat disk composed of gas and dust. The alignment of the planets in our solar system is an example of this order. But TIDYE-1b has an orbit that is not aligned with its star and disk. “This extraordinary tilt makes us question our current models of planet formation.”
Although not as dense as Earth, TIDYE-1b, which is approximately 11 times the diameter of Earth, provides definitive evidence that planets can form in less than 10 million years. The scarcity of previously young planets does not indicate that they do not exist, but simply that they are obscured by gas and dust.
