Astronomers confirm youngest known planet, less than 1 million years old

Astronomers have confirmed Elias 2-24 b, a Jupiter-size planet less than a million years old, making it the youngest planet ever found, still embedded in its star's gas and dust disk. Researchers led by Andrea Bernardi at Universidad Diego Portales identified it using archived Keck Observatory coronagraph data on seven young stars, published September 16 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Co-author Lucas Cieza notes it beats the previous record holders, PDS 70's and WISPIT 2's planets (over 5 million years old), and its rapid formation challenges current planet-formation models.