Astronomers confirm the youngest known planet and question how it formed so quickly

Astronomers confirmed Elias 2-24 b, about 450 light-years from Earth, as the youngest known planet at under 1 million years old. W. M. Keck Observatory images taken nearly two years apart show it in a gas-and-dust disk gap roughly 55 astronomical units from its star, a result in The Astrophysical Journal Letters that challenges how quickly giant planets can form by core assembly and gas accretion.