Tracking the birth of a 'super-earth'

[Claire.]

Tracking the birth of a 'super-earth'

A new model giving rise to young planetary systems offers a fresh solution to a puzzle that has vexed astronomers ever since new detection technologies and planet-hunting missions such as NASA's Kepler space telescope have revealed thousands of planets orbiting other stars: While the majority of these exoplanets fall into a category called super-Earths -- bodies with a mass somewhere between Earth and Neptune -- most of the features observed in nascent planetary systems were thought to require much more massive planets, rivaling or dwarfing Jupiter, the gas giant in our solar system.

Read more: Science Daily