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Astronomers led by University of Arizona’s Laird Close, alongside Leiden Observatory graduate student Richelle van Capelleveen, have directly observed a planet in the making — WISPIT 2b — nested within the rings of a protoplanetary disk around a young Sun-like star in the constellation Aquila, about 430 light-years away. The planet is confirmed to be about five times Jupiter’s mass, actively accreting gas, and clearing a prominent gap in the disk. This observation aligns almost perfectly with the long-standing scientific model of planet formation—and stands in stark contrast to the biblical narrative of instant land-mass creation, involving no orbit, disk, or extended evolutionary process.
This discovery will be depressing news for creationists, especially when contrasted with the biblical account of Earth’s creation — where magic words allegedly call a small, flat land mass into existence consisting of a few square miles of land around the Canaanite Hills, with no hint of orbiting a star or forming within a protoplanetary disk. The stark mismatch extends beyond metaphor — the actual physical process astronomers observe has no room for magic, and more importantly, aligns precisely with predictions from scientific theories of planetary formation.
Bible vs Reality.What the scientists saw was:
How the Bible compares up to scientific reality Aspect Biblical Account Astronomical Reality Mechanism Magic words, instantaneous creation Physical process involving gravity, accretion, and angular momentum over millions of years. Location Flat land (‘Canaanite Hills’) A planet embedded in a protoplanetary disk around a Sun-like star in Aquila, ~430 light-years away. Formation context No mention of orbit, disk Planet formation within a disk, clearing gaps as it grows—precisely what scientific models predict and what we now observe. Scientific basis Faith-based narrative written in the Bronze Age Confirmed through observation across multiple wavelengths; aligns with theoretical models of planet formation, evolution, and disk-planet interactions.
- WISPIT 2 (also designated TYC 5709-354-1) is a young, Sun-like, pre-main-sequence star situated in the Scorpius-Centaurus OB association, likely part of subgroup Theia 53, lying in Aquila.
- This star hosts a multi-ringed protoplanetary disk, with a notable gap at around 68 AU, outer rings reaching 316 AU, and overall disk extending to about 380 AU.
- Inside the gap, the team directly imaged WISPIT 2b—a gas giant with an estimated mass of roughly 5 Jupiter masses (4.9 +0.9/–0.6 Mn).
- The planet was detected via near-infrared (VLT/SPHERE) and visible Hα light (MagAO-X)—the latter showing active accretion, i.e., the planet is still gathering mass.
- WISPIT 2b exhibits orbital motion consistent with Keplerian rotation and appears co-moving with its star; another candidate (CC1) was also observed closer in, though it may be a dust clump pending confirmation.
This is a landmark observation—it's the second confirmed case (the first being in 2018) of seeing a planet forming around a Sun-like star. The disk’s rings and gap structure were long theorised as signs of planetary formation; now astronomers have captured direct evidence that planets carve these gaps, and they can see one in the act of forming.
In visible Hα (hydrogen-alpha) light, WISPIT 2b manifests as a glowing purple dot — proof it's accreting gas — and in infrared as a bright young planet still cooling after formation.
The discovery is described in a University of Arizona news item and is also the subject of two open-access papers in The Astrophysical Journal Letters; one by Richelle F. van Capelleveen, et al. and the other by Laird Close, et al.
A growing baby planet photographed for first time in a ring of darkness
A team of astronomers has detected for the first time a growing planet outside our solar system, embedded in a cleared gap of a multi-ringed disk of dust and gas.
The team, led by University of Arizona astronomer Laird Close and Richelle van Capelleveen, an astronomy graduate student at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, discovered the unique exoplanet using the University of Arizona's MagAO-X extreme adaptive optics system at the Magellan Telescope in Chile, the U of A's Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona and the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile. Their results are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The WISPIT 2 system as seen by the Magellan Telescope in Chile and the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona. The protoplanet WISPIT 2b appears as a purple dot in a dust-free gap between a bright, white dust ring around the star and a fainter, outer ring, orbiting at about 56 times the average distance between the Earth and the sun. The other potential planet, CC1, appears as the red object inside the dust free cavity and is estimated to be about 15 Earth-sun distances from its host star.Laird Close, University of Arizona
For years, astronomers have observed several dozen planet-forming disks of gas and dust surrounding young stars. Many of these disks display gaps in their rings, hinting at the possibility that they are being "plowed" by nearby nascent planets, or protoplanets, like lanes being cleared by a snowplow. Yet, only about three actual young growing protoplanets have been discovered to date, all in the cavities between a host star and the inner edge of its adjacent protoplanetary disk. Until this discovery, no protoplanets had been seen in the conspicuous disk gaps – which appear as dark rings.
In this artist's illustration, infalling hydrogen gas causes the growing protoplanet WISPIT 2b to shine brightly in the hydrogen alpha spectrum, to which the MagAO-X instrument is particularly sensitive.Joseph Olmsted/STScI/NASA.
Dozens of theory papers have been written about these observed disk gaps being caused by protoplanets, but no one's ever found a definitive one until today.
Professor Laird M. Close
Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics
Department of Astronomy
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
[Professor Close] calls the discovery a "big deal," because the absence of planet discoveries in places where they should be has prompted many in the scientific community to invoke alternative explanations for the ring-and-gap pattern found in many protoplanetary disks.
It's been a point of tension, actually, in the literature and in astronomy in general, that we have these really dark gaps, but we cannot detect the faint exoplanets in them. Many have doubted that protoplanets can make these gaps, but now we know that in fact, they can.
Professor Laird M. Close
4.5 billion years ago, our solar system began as just such a disk. As dust coalesced into clumps, sucking up gas around them, the first protoplanets began to form. How exactly this process unfolded, however, is still largely a mystery. To find answers, astronomers have looked to other planetary systems that are still in their infancy, known as planet-forming disks, or protoplanetary disks.
Close's team took advantage of an adaptive optics system, one of the most formidable of its kind in the world, developed and built by Close, Jared Males and their students. Males is an associate astronomer at Steward Observatory and the principal investigator of MagAO-X. MagAO-X, which stands for "Magellan Adaptive Optics System eXtreme," dramatically improves the sharpness and resolution of telescope images by compensating for atmospheric turbulence, the phenomenon that causes stars to flicker and blur, and is dreaded by astronomers.
Suspecting there should be invisible planets hiding in the gaps of protoplanetary disks, Close's team surveyed all the disks with gaps and probed them for a specific emission of visible light known as hydrogen alpha or H-alpha.
As planets form and grow, they suck in hydrogen gas from their surroundings, and as that gas crashes down on them like a giant waterfall coming from outer space and hits the surface, it creates extremely hot plasma, which in turn, emits this particular H-alpha light signature. MagAO-X is specially designed to look for hydrogen gas falling onto young protoplanets, and that's how we can detect them.
Professor Laird M. Close
The team used the 6.5-meter Magellan Telescope and MagAO-X to probe WISPIT-2, a disk van Capelleveen recently discovered with the VLT. Viewed in H-alpha light, Close's group struck gold. A dot of light appeared inside the gap between two rings of the protoplanetary disk around the star. In addition, the team observed a second candidate planet inside the "cavity" between the star and the inner edge of the dust and gas disk.
Once we turned on the adaptive optics system, the planet jumped right out at us. After combining two hours' worth of images, it just popped out.
Professor Laird M. Close
Professor Close... called this one of the more important discoveries in his career.
According to Close, the planet, designated WISPIT 2b, is a very rare example of a protoplanet in the process of accreting material onto itself. Its host star, WISPIT 2 is similar to the sun and about the same mass. The inner planet candidate, dubbed CC1, contains about nine Jupiter masses, whereas the outer planet, WISPIT 2b, weighs in at about five Jupiter masses. These masses were inferred, in part, from the thermal infrared light observed by the University of Arizona’s 8.4-meter Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham in Southeastern Arizona with the help of U of A astronomy graduate student Gabriel Weible.
It's a bit like what our own Jupiter and Saturn would have looked like when they were 5,000 times younger than they are now. The planets in the WISPIT-2 system appear to be about 10 times more massive than our own gas giants and more spread out. But the overall appearance is likely not so different from what a nearby 'alien astronomer' could have seen in a 'baby picture' of our solar system taken 4.5 billion years ago.
Gabriel Weible, co-author.
Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics
Department of Astronomy
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
Our MagAO-X adaptive optics system is optimized like no other to work well at the H-alpha wavelength, so you can separate the bright starlight from the faint protoplanet. Around WISPIT 2 you likely have two planets and four rings and four gaps. It's an amazing system.
Professor Laird M. Close
CC1 might orbit at about 14-15 astronomical units – with one AU equaling the average distance between the sun and Earth, which would place it halfway between Saturn and Uranus, if it was part of our solar system, according to Close. WISPIT-2b, the planet carving out the gap, is farther out at about 56 AU, which in our own solar system, would put it well past the orbit of Neptune, around the outer edge of the Kuiper Belt.
A second paper published in parallel and led by van Capelleveen and the University of Galway details the detection of the planet in the infrared light spectrum and the discovery of the multi-ringed system with the 8-meter VLT telescope’s SPHERE adaptive optics system.
To see planets in the fleeting time of their youth, astronomers have to find young disk systems, which are rare, because that's the one time that they really are brighter and so detectable. If the WISPIT-2 system was the age of our solar system and we used the same technology to look at it, we'd see nothing. Everything would be too cold and too dark.
Richelle F. van Capelleveen, lead author.
Leiden Observatory
Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Publications:Richelle F. van Capelleveen et al 2025
WIde Separation Planets In Time (WISPIT): A Gap-clearing Planet in a Multi-ringed Disk around the Young Solar-type Star WISPIT 2 ApJL 990 L8 DOI 10.3847/2041-8213/adf721
Laird M. Close et al 2025
Wide Separation Planets in Time (WISPIT): Discovery of a Gap Hα Protoplanet WISPIT 2b with MagAO-X ApJL 990 L9 DOI 10.3847/2041-8213/adf7a5
Abstract
In the past decades, several thousand exoplanet systems have been discovered around evolved, main-sequence stars, revealing a wide diversity in their architectures. To understand how the planet formation process can lead to vastly different outcomes in system architecture, we have to study the starting conditions of planet formation within the disks around young stars. In this study, we are presenting high-resolution direct imaging observations with the Very Large Telescope/SPHERE of the young (∼5 Myr), nearby (∼133 pc), solar-analog designated as WISPIT 2 (= TYC 5709-354-1). These observations were taken as part of our survey program that explores the formation and orbital evolution of wide-separation gas giants. WISPIT 2 was observed in four independent epochs using polarized light and total intensity observations. They reveal for the first time an extended (380 au) disk in scattered light with a multi-ringed substructure. We directly detect a young protoplanet, WISPIT 2b, embedded in a disk gap and show that it is comoving with its host star. Multiple SPHERE epochs demonstrate that it shows orbital motion consistent with Keplerian motion in the observed disk gap. Our H- and Ks-band photometric data are consistent with thermal emission from a young planet. By comparison with planet evolutionary models, we find a mass of the planet of \( 4.9_{-0.6}^{+0.9} M_{\text{Jup}}\). This mass is also consistent with the width of the observed disk gap, retrieved from hydrodynamic models. WISPIT 2b is the first unambiguous planet detection in a multi-ringed disk, making the WISPIT 2 system the ideal laboratory to study planet–disk interaction and subsequent evolution.
1. Introduction
It has only been three decades since the first exoplanet detection, but tremendous progress has been made since: to date, there are nearly 6000 confirmed exoplanets. These planets span a wide range of masses, are found at separations from less than an astronomical unit (e.g., R. I. Dawson &D. C. Fabrycky 2010; E. Goffo et al. 2023) to several hundreds of astronomical units from their host stars (e.g., M. Janson et al. 2021; Z. Zhang et al. 2021.1), and exhibit diverse atmospheric chemistries (e.g., R. J. MacDonald &N. Madhusudhan 2017; Z. Rustamkulov et al. 2023.1; C. Gapp et al. 2025), with some planets even hosting circumplanetary disks (CPDs; e.g., M. Benisty et al. 2021.2; L. M. Close et al. 2025.1a). They have been found around a variety of stellar types, including stellar multiples (e.g., S. Sigurdsson et al. 2003; T. J. Dupuy et al. 2018; V. B. Kostov et al. 2020), though the majority have been detected around single stars. This diversity raises a fundamental question: are planetary properties inherited from their natal disks, or shaped by later evolutionary processes? Addressing this question requires a detailed understanding of the environments in which planets form—their protoplanetary disks.
As the disk and planet evolve simultaneously, the disk affects the planet and the planet in turn affects the disk. This is evident in the formation of substructures and in the distribution of gas and dust. Combined observations from high-contrast imaging—sensitive to thermal emission and scattered light from (sub)micron-sized dust—and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), which traces gas and millimeter dust, have revealed a wide variety of such substructures. These findings have provided critical inputs for theoretical models of disk dynamical evolution and planet–disk interactions (see review J. Bae et al. 2023.2, and citations therein).
The next logical step toward advancing our understanding of planet–disk interactions in early planet formation is to test these models against observations of planet-forming disks with embedded protoplanets. This remains challenging, however, as to date, only one system—PDS 70—has been unambiguously confirmed to host embedded protoplanets (M. Keppler et al. 2018.1; S. Y. Haffert et al. 2019). While several notable candidate systems exist (e.g., R. Gratton et al. 2019.1; T. Currie et al. 2022), confirmation is hindered by the difficulty of disentangling planet signal from disk signal (e.g., K. B. Follette et al. 2017.1; T. Currie et al. 2019.2). In the case of direct detections, the challenge lies in determining whether the detected emission originates from a planet or from disk structures. For indirect methods, such as detections based on kinematic signatures, the difficulty lies in distinguishing between deviations from Keplerian velocity caused by an embedded planet and those resulting from intrinsic disk dynamics in the absence of a planet (R. Teague et al. 2025.2). These difficulties are compounded by the technical complexity of detecting low-mass planets, especially through accretion signals (M. Benisty et al. 2023.3; L. M. Close et al. 2025.1a). This scarcity of testbeds, both in number and diversity, leaves key questions about planet formation unresolved.
One such question concerns the formation of wide-separation giant planets orbiting at semimajor axes larger than 50 au. It remains unclear whether these are formed in situ through gravitational instability, either through interstellar cloud fragmentation or circumstellar disk fragmentation (P. Kroupa 1995; A. P. Boss 1997), or whether they were formed closer to the star through accretion processes (J. B. Pollack et al. 1996) and migrated outward later through scattering events. Along with the broader goal of discovering planets and determining their occurrence rates around stars similar to our Sun, this gave rise to the Young Suns Exoplanet Survey (YSES; A. J. Bohn et al. 2021.3; R. F. van Capelleveen 2025, in preparation), a Very Large Telescope (VLT)/SPHERE direct imaging survey targeting 70 young (14 ± 3 Myr), solar-mass stars in the Lower Centaurus Crux subgroup of the Scorpius-Centaurus (Sco-Cen) OB association. Building on the success of YSES, the WIde Separation Planets In Time (WISPIT; R. F. van Capelleveen et al. 2025.3; R. F. van Capelleveen 2025, in preparation) survey extends this sample to younger ages—the median age is 8.5 Myr—and to other regions of the sky. This ongoing survey comprises a total of 178 young suns, making it the closest and largest selection of young solar-mass stars.
The best way to test (wide-separation) planet formation and planet–disk interaction theories is finding unambiguous planet signals embedded in disks around young stars. In this work, we present such a discovery: a robust detection of a planetary companion embedded in a ringed disk around WISPIT 2 (=TYC 5709-354-1)—see Figure 1. In Section 2 we present the stellar properties of WISPIT 2, followed by our observations and data processing in Section 3. In Section 4 we detail the morphology and analysis of the scattered light from the multi-ringed disk. The characterization of multiple epochs of the planet along with its orbital properties are detailed in Section 5, and its subsequent interaction with the disk follows in Section 6. The planetary interpretation of WISPIT 2b is additionally strengthened by its detection in Hα observations (L. M. Close et al. 2025.4b, companion Letter 2). Our discussion and conclusions are presented in Section 8.
Figure 1. Shown here is a SPHERE/IRDIS multiband image of the WISPIT 2 system. The H-band Qϕ image was added as the blue channel and the median combination of H-band and Ks-band Qϕ images was added as the green channel. The red channel is a combination of a Ks-band Qϕ image and a Ks-band cADI image in which we masked all but the gap containing the thermal emission from WISPIT 2b. For more details, see Appendix G.
Richelle F. van Capelleveen et al 2025
WIde Separation Planets In Time (WISPIT): A Gap-clearing Planet in a Multi-ringed Disk around the Young Solar-type Star WISPIT 2 ApJL 990 L8 DOI 10.3847/2041-8213/adf721
Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by IOP Publishing. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
AbstractThe direct observation of a planet in the process of forming is devastating news for creationists because it removes any remaining doubt that planets emerge from natural, physical processes rather than by supernatural command. The Bible’s narrative of Earth’s sudden appearance through divine fiat bears no resemblance to what astronomers actually see: a young planet slowly accreting material from a protoplanetary disk over millions of years. This is not a matter of interpretation or metaphor—the descriptions are mutually exclusive. Either planets form through gravity, dust, gas, and time, or they are conjured fully made. What telescopes now reveal could not be further removed from the latter.
Excellent (<25 mas) Hα images of the star TYC 5709-354-1 led to the discovery of a rare Hα protoplanet. This star was discovered by the WISPIT survey to have a large multi-ring transitional disk, and is hereafter WISPIT 2. Our Hα images of 2025 April 13 and 16 discovered an accreting (Hα in emission) protoplanet: WISPIT 2b (r = 309.43 ± 1.56 mas; (∼54 au deprojected), PA = 242\(\mathop{.}\limits^{\unicode{x000b0}}\)21 ± 0\(\mathop{.}\limits^{\unicode{x000b0}}\)41) likely clearing a dust-free gap between the two brightest dust rings in the transitional disk. Our signal-to-noise ratio of 12.5 detection gave an Hα ASDI contrast of (6.5 ± 0.5) × 10−4 and an Hα line flux of (1.29 ± 0.28) × 10−15 erg s−1 cm−2. We also present L′ photometry from LBT/LMIRcam of the planet (L′ = 15.30 ± 0.05 mag), which, when coupled with an age of \( 5.1_{-1.3}^{+2.4}\) Myr, yields a planet mass estimate of 5.3 ± 1.0 Mjup from the DUSTY evolutionary models. WISPIT 2b is accreting at \(2.25_{-0.17}^{+3.75}\) x 10−12 MSun yr-1. WISPIT 2b is very similar to the other Hα protoplanets in terms of mass, age, flux, and accretion rate. The inclination of the system (i = 44°) is also, surprisingly, very similar to the other known Hα protoplanet systems, which all cluster from 37° ≤ i ≤ 52°. We argue this clustering has only a ∼1.0% (2.6σ) probability of occurring randomly, and so we speculate that magnetospherical accretion might have a preferred inclination range (∼37°–52°) for the direct (cloud free, low extinction) line of sight to the Hα line formation/shock region. We also find at 110 mas (∼15 au deprojected) a close companion candidate (CC1) that may be consistent with an inner dusty 9 ± 4 Mjup planet.
1. Introduction
It is now well established that some gas giant protoplanets pass through a period of high luminosity as they accrete hydrogen gas from their circumplanetary disks (CPDs) producing detectable Hα emission. This was most clearly demonstrated initially in the discovery of Hα emission from PDS 70 b (K. Wagner et al. 2018.2), and PDS 70 c (S. Y. Haffert et al. 2019). Direct observations of protoplanets (defined here as accreting planets) are a key window into this very poorly understood process of planet formation and accretion from a CPD, which itself is embedded in a larger circumstellar disk, or transitional disk (C. Espaillat et al. 2011; L. Francis & N. van der Marel 2020). While the exact mechanisms of planetary accretion are not yet fully understood, massive planets could magnetospherically accrete, via magnetic fields, directly onto a latitude line of the planet (Z. Zhu et al. 2016; T. Thanathibodee et al. 2019.3; G.-D. Marleau et al. 2022.1, and references within). Accretion through shocks onto the CPD is also possible (J. Szulágyi & C. Mordasini 2017.2; Y. Aoyama et al. 2018.3; Y. Aoyama et al. 2021.4; J. Szulágyi et al. 2022.2, and references within), and it is unclear which process, or a combination of both, dominate. To be clear, the Aoyama model and magnetospheric accretion model are not mutually exclusive. The Aoyama model could also explain the Hα emission in a magnetospheric accretion scenario. The difference is the origin of the emission. The Thanathibodee model assumes emission from the accretion flow tracing the magnetic field. The Aoyama model assumes emission from the shock itself. Variability studies may be able to inform which of these models are more likely (D. Demars et al. 2023.4; L. M. Close et al. 2025.6; Y. Zhou et al. 2025.5, and references within). The key to informing our accreting protoplanet models is to discover more systems—because there is only one really well-studied system (PDS 70) to date (L. M. Close et al. 2025.6, and references within). Indeed, the study of protoplanets is critical if we are to understand the process of planet formation, accretion, satellite/moon growth, CPDs, and the impact that these planets have on their host disks (clearing gaps, creating cavities, etc).
In Section 2 of this Letter, we briefly introduce the current state of Hα protoplanet detections, instrumentation, and techniques. We introduce the newly discovered transitional disk star WISPIT 2 at the end of that section. Note that our companion Letter (R. F. van Capelleveen et al. 2025.3; hereafter Letter 1) covers the H+Ks characterization and discovery of the star’s impressive multi-ringed transitional disk and planet in the near-IR (NIR). In Section 3, we describe our MagAO-X and LBTI/LMIRcam observations of WISPIT2. In Section 4, we introduce the discovery Hα images of the protoplanet WISPIT 2b, and follow-up images at L′. Section 5 presents the Hα and L′ photometry and astrometry of WISPIT 2b. In Section 6, we analyze the Hα photometry to derive the line flux and mass accretion rate of WISPIT 2b. In Section 7, we derive a mass for WISPIT 2b from the L′ photometry, and compare to the H+Ks planetary mass from Letter 1. We also discuss WISPIT 2b compared to the other known Hα protoplanets—defined as exoplanets that have a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) > 5 Hα emission detections at multiple epochs. At the end of this discussion, we describe an inner close companion (CC1), which could be an inner planet or an unusually red compact dust clump. Our conclusions are given in Section 8.
Figure 1. The discovery images of WISPIT 2b. These are both the 2025 April MagAO-X Hα pyKLIP pipeline reduced data sets. The thick central green circles (r = 103 mas) are centered on the star. The lighter-green circles (r = 89 mas) all have identical centers at WISPIT 2b (star–planet separation = 309.43 mas, PA = 242\(\mathop{.}\limits^{\unicode{x000b0}}\)2). In the discovery image, WISPIT 2b is detected in the ASDI image at a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) = 5.5 (top right), on April 16 it was recovered at SNR = 12.5 (bottom right). The dashed yellow line in the Hα image traces the second-brightest ring (visible at z′; called ring #2; the brightest inner ring is ring #3; see Letter 1 for ring images and names). All images have the first 5 principal component (PC) modes removed by pyKLIP with movement set to zero. Images are 1518 × 1388 mas, smoothed by an FWHM = 17 mas Gaussian (except the z′ image, which has a 29 mas smoothing and pyKLIP movement = 5, and a deeper stretch). North is up, and east is left in these, and all following, images.
Laird M. Close et al 2025
Wide Separation Planets in Time (WISPIT): Discovery of a Gap Hα Protoplanet WISPIT 2b with MagAO-X ApJL 990 L9 DOI 10.3847/2041-8213/adf7a5
Published by IOP Publishing. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
For science, however, this is a triumphant vindication. The existence of gaps in protoplanetary disks had long been predicted as the signature of growing planets, yet until recently this was only inference. Now, with the direct imaging of WISPIT 2b actively accreting matter, the prediction is confirmed before our eyes. This is the scientific method at work: propose a hypothesis, derive expectations, test them with observation, and adjust understanding according to the evidence. Far from being undermined, the theory of planetary formation has been reinforced.
What creationists dismiss as “just a theory” has once again proven itself through prediction and verification, while their own account has no explanatory power, cannot be tested, and is contradicted by reality. Each new discovery like this not only enlarges our understanding of the cosmos, but also highlights the profound gulf between mythology and science. The former insists on unquestioning acceptance; the latter earns confidence by demonstrating results. In this case, astronomy has delivered exactly what the theory said it would: a planet, in the act of being born.
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