Adolescence Is Tumultuous, Even For Exoplanets

This illustration shows an exoplanet orbiting a K-dwarf star. Astronomers have studied a multiplanet system around one of these stars that's in an 'adolescent' stage of development. It's a rare opportunity to study a solar system in this short-lived, transitional stage of development.

Planetary systems such as our solar system take hundreds of millions of years to evolve. But we see most exoplanet systems either very early in their development, or long after the systems have settled down. There’s an information gap about what happens in the middle, and a rarely observed “adolescent” system is a valuable opportunity to learn more and to test models of planetary evolution.

Universe Today
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