Zombie Star, Planet Birth & AI Breakthroughs: Science News Roundup (Sep 8–9, 2025)
Key Facts Space & Astronomy Planet Birth Caught in the Act: For the first time, astronomers have directly spotted a young planet forming inside the gap of a ringed disk around a sun-like star sciencedaily.com sciencedaily.com. The newborn exoplanet, named WISPIT 2b, was detected using an advanced adaptive optics system on the Magellan Telescope. It appears as a bright dot of H-alpha emission within a cleared gap of dust and gas sciencedaily.com sciencedaily.com – exactly where a “protoplanet” has long been predicted to carve out a gap. “Dozens of theory papers have been written about these disk gaps being caused by