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Understanding Planetary Formation

Planetary formation traditionally follows a gradual process known as core accretion. In this model, dust and gas in a protoplanetary disk surrounding a young star coalesce into planetesimals. Over millions of years, these planetesimals collide and merge, forming larger planetary cores. Once a core reaches a critical mass, it begins to attract a significant envelope of gas, eventually forming a fully-fledged planet.

However, the discovery of fast-forming exoplanets suggests that this timeline may be far more dynamic under certain conditions. Observations of young stellar systems reveal exoplanets forming within tens of thousands to a few hundred thousand years—a fraction of the time previously assumed necessary for planetary development.