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Stories about: protoplanet

A Planet in the Making At this moment there are 277 planets known to exist outside our solar system, most of which are either gas giants or too inhospitable for life. A very little number of these exoplanets have rocky surfaces or bear a small resemblance to our planet. Astronomers from the University of St Andrews in collaboration with co... 3 April 2008 02:52 GMT Cosmic Collision Left Naked Asteroid to Cool Down A cosmic impact between two bodies resulted in a 200 mile-wide iron meteorite, the size of Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam, left to chill out in space, and which produced roughly 60 smaller ones.It is believed that asteroidal bodies are just leftover debris from the collisions and subsequent melting that happens when p... 19 April 2007 03:46 GMT How Far Must a Star Be from Its Neighbors to Form Planets It is the general belief of astronomers that planets are created in flat disks of gas and dust, called protoplanetary disks, which swirl around young, cool stars, and are slowly drawn together by a forming gravitation nucleus. According to standard planet-formation theory, over millions of years the particles clump ... 19 April 2007 03:00 GMT