Newfound ‘Baby’ Planet Smashes Record for Youngest Known World

Astronomers have confirmed a world that’s less than a million years old as the youngest known planet, using data from NASA-funded archives. Called Elias 2-24 b, the baby planet is still whirling in its natal disk of dust and gas. “Our planet-formation models already struggled to explain the previous record holders for the youngest known […].

Newfound ‘Baby’ Planet Smashes Record for Youngest Known World. 5 Min Read Newfound ‘Baby’ Planet Smashes Record for Youngest Known World An artist’s concept of the youngest known exoplanet: Elias 2024 b. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko Ashley Balzer Sep 16, 2026 Article Contents Construction zone Connecting dots Astronomers have confirmed a world that’s less than a million years old as the youngest known planet, using data from NASA-funded archives.

“Our planet-formation models already struggled to explain the previous record holders for the youngest known planet — a four-way tie between two planets orbiting the star PDS 70 and two planets orbiting the star WISPIT 2 — which are all more than 5 million years old,” said Lucas Cieza, a professor at the Instituto de Estudios Astrofísicos in Chile and co-author of a paper detailing the results. “Elias 2-24 b shows us that even our best planet-formation models are still missing some important processes.” In a study published Wednesday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team led by Andrea Bernardi, a doctoral candidate at the Universidad Diego Portales in Chile, homed in on archival observations of seven stars that were observed using the coronagraph at the W. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, which partners with NASA under a cooperative agreement.

Each of these stars hosts a debris disk chock-full of dust, gas, and chunks of ice and rock with structures and gaps in the disk hinting that planets may be forming around them. Artist’s concept depicting Elias 2-24 b, the youngest exoplanet detected to date, still growing within the disk of gas and dust surrounding its young host star.