Origin of planets

SYDNEY: It’s official: planets are formed from the debris swirling around a young star, astronomers have confimed, more than 250 years after the idea was first proposed.

In 1755, the philosopher Emmanuel Kant first proposed that planets are born from discs of dust and gas orbiting their home stars. Though astronomers have detected more than 200 extrasolar planets and have seen many debris disks around young stars, they had never observed a planet and a debris disc around the same star. Now, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, in collaboration with ground-based observatories, has at last confirmed what Kant and scientists have long predicted. read more