This image shows jets of silicon monoxide (SiO) blowing away from the baby star HOPS-315. The image was obtained with the with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner.
One of the more dishonest tactics employed by creationist grifter Ken Ham is his infamous question: "Were you there?" As though the only valid form of evidence is eye-witness testimony. The implication is clear—if you didn’t personally observe a species evolving, then you have no grounds to claim that evolution occurred. And by extension, Ham suggests that his own creationist claims are equally valid and deserve the same consideration as scientific explanations, despite the fact that he wasn't there either.
Of course, this deliberately ignores the many well-documented instances of observed evolution and the overwhelming fossil evidence showing gradual transitions over time.
He applies the same fallacious reasoning to cosmology, dismissing scientific accounts of Earth’s and the solar system’s origins on the grounds that no one was there to witness them. As though this somehow makes the biblical Bronze Age myth—a magical spontaneous assembly in response to divine incantation—equally plausible.
In a typically cynical move, Ham teaches children to parrot this question as a way to shut down scientific discussion. Rather than encouraging curiosity with the far more constructive question, "How do you know that?" — a gateway to learning about observation, extrapolation, and logical reasoning — he arms them with a slogan designed to obstruct inquiry and preserve ignorance, while making them feel smugly superior to the scientists having exposed the 'flaw' in their reasoning.
But now, thanks to cutting-edge astronomical research, science has delivered something akin to “being there” at the birth of a planet.
An international team of researchers, using the ALMA telescope (operated in part by the European Southern Observatory) and the James Webb Space Telescope, have observed what appears to be the formation of an Earth-like planet in the accretion disk of a young star. This is direct evidence supporting the scientific model of planetary formation — the very process that explains the origins of Earth and the solar system.
Predictably, this discovery will require some creative misrepresentation from creationists to dismiss it. No doubt we’ll hear claims that it’s not really the same process that formed Earth, or that it doesn’t disprove Genesis — because defending ancient mythology apparently requires ignoring any modern evidence that makes it look absurdly naive.
How Planets Form in an Accretion Disc. When a star forms, it begins with a collapsing cloud of gas and dust—mostly hydrogen, with trace amounts of heavier elements. As gravity pulls this material inward, it starts to spin due to the conservation of angular momentum. This rotation causes the material to flatten into a disc around the newborn star, known as a protoplanetary (or accretion) disc.You can read the full details of the discovery in the peer-reviewed paper in Nature, or in the ESO's official press release.
Within this disc, dust grains collide and stick together, forming larger and larger clumps through a process called coagulation. Over time, these clumps grow into kilometre-sized bodies known as planetesimals. Through continued collisions and gravitational attraction, planetesimals merge to form protoplanets.
As they grow, these embryonic planets can clear gaps in the disc and attract more material, eventually becoming full-sized planets. The position within the disc affects their composition: rocky planets tend to form closer to the star where it's hotter, while gas giants form farther out where ices can accumulate.
This process can take just a few million years—remarkably brief on cosmic timescales—and is supported by both observations and simulations. The recent discovery of a forming Earth-like planet in a young star’s accretion disc gives us a rare glimpse into this fundamental cosmic process, as close as we’ll get to “being there.”
For the first time, astronomers witness the dawn of a new solar system
International researchers have, for the first time, pinpointed the moment when planets began to form around a star beyond the Sun. Using the ALMA telescope, in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner, and the James Webb Space Telescope, they have observed the creation of the first specks of planet-forming material — hot minerals just beginning to solidify. This finding marks the first time a planetary system has been identified at such an early stage in its formation and opens a window to the past of our own Solar System.
For the first time, we have identified the earliest moment when planet formation is initiated around a star other than our Sun.
Professor Melissa K. McClure, lead author
Leiden Observatory
Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
[Our findings are] a picture of the baby Solar System. We're seeing a system that looks like what our Solar System looked like when it was just beginning to form.
Professor Merel van ‘t Hoff, co-author
Purdue University, USA.
This newborn planetary system is emerging around HOPS-315, a ‘proto’ or baby star that sits some 1300 light-years away from us and is an analogue of the nascent Sun. Around such baby stars, astronomers often see discs of gas and dust known as ‘protoplanetary discs’, which are the birthplaces of new planets. While astronomers have previously seen young discs that contain newborn, massive, Jupiter-like planets, McClure says,
...we've always known that the first solid parts of planets, or ‘planetesimals’, must form further back in time, at earlier stages.
Professor Melissa K. McClure.
In our Solar System, the very first solid material to condense near Earth’s present location around the Sun is found trapped within ancient meteorites. Astronomers age-date these primordial rocks to determine when the clock started on our Solar System’s formation. Such meteorites are packed full of crystalline minerals that contain silicon monoxide (SiO) and can condense at the extremely high temperatures present in young planetary discs. Over time, these newly condensed solids bind together, sowing the seeds for planet formation as they gain both size and mass. The first kilometre-sized planetesimals in the Solar System, which grew to become planets such as Earth or Jupiter’s core, formed just after the condensation of these crystalline minerals.
With their new discovery, astronomers have found evidence of these hot minerals beginning to condense in the disc around HOPS-315. Their results show that SiO is present around the baby star in its gaseous state, as well as within these crystalline minerals, suggesting it is only just beginning to solidify.
This process has never been seen before in a protoplanetary disc — or anywhere outside our Solar System.
Professor Edwin Bergin, co-author
University of Michigan, USA.
These minerals were first identified using the James Webb Space Telescope, a joint project of the US, European and Canadian space agencies. To find out where exactly the signals were coming from, the team observed the system with ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, which is operated by ESO together with international partners in Chile’s Atacama Desert.
With these data, the team determined that the chemical signals were coming from a small region of the disc around the star equivalent to the orbit of the asteroid belt around the Sun.
We're really seeing these minerals at the same location in this extrasolar system as where we see them in asteroids in the Solar System.
Dr Logan Francis, co-author
Leiden University, Netherlands.
Because of this, the disc of HOPS-315 provides a wonderful analogue for studying our own cosmic history.
This system is one of the best that we know to actually probe some of the processes that happened in our Solar System.
Professor Merel van ‘t Hoff.
It also provides astronomers with a new opportunity to study early planet formation, by standing in as a substitute for newborn solar systems across the galaxy.
I was really impressed by this study, which reveals a very early stage of planet formation. It suggests that HOPS-315 can be used to understand how our own Solar System formed. This result highlights the combined strength of JWST and ALMA for exploring protoplanetary discs.
Elizabeth Humphreys, who did not take part in the study
ESO astronomer and European ALMA Programme Manager.
Publication:McClure, M.K., van’t Hoff, M., Francis, L. et al.
Refractory solid condensation detected in an embedded protoplanetary disk. Nature 643, 649–653 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09163-z
AbstractThis latest discovery is yet another blow to the creationist narrative. For decades, creationists like Ken Ham have insisted that science has no direct evidence for the formation of planets, let alone Earth. But now, with telescopes capable of peering into distant star systems as they actively form, we’re witnessing the very processes described by astrophysics in real time. We are, quite literally, observing a planet being born in a way that aligns precisely with the scientific model—and not at all with the simplistic creation myths of ancient texts.
Terrestrial planets and small bodies in our Solar System are theorized to have assembled from interstellar solids mixed with rocky solids that precipitated from a hot, cooling gas1,2. The first high-temperature minerals to recondense from this gaseous reservoir start the clock on planet formation3,4. However, the production mechanism of this initial hot gas and its importance to planet formation in other systems are unclear. Here we report the astronomical detection of this t = 0 moment, capturing the building blocks of a new planetary system beginning its assembly. The young protostar HOPS-315 is observed at infrared and millimetre wavelengths with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), revealing a reservoir of warm silicon monoxide gas and crystalline silicate minerals low in the atmosphere of a disk within 2.2 au of the star, physically isolated from the millimetre SiO jet. Comparison with condensation models with rapid grain growth and disk structure models suggests the formation of refractory solids analogous to those in our Solar System. Our results indicate that the environment in the inner disk region is influenced by sublimation of interstellar solids and subsequent refractory solid recondensation from this gas reservoir on timescales comparable with refractory condensation in our own Solar System.
McClure, M.K., van’t Hoff, M., Francis, L. et al.
Refractory solid condensation detected in an embedded protoplanetary disk.
Nature 643, 649–653 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09163-z
© 2025 Springer Nature Ltd.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
As the tools of science become ever more sophisticated, they continue to confirm and refine our understanding of natural processes, from the birth of stars to the evolution of life. What creationists once dismissed as “just a theory” is increasingly supported by empirical evidence observable across vast timescales and cosmic distances.
Creationism, by contrast, remains unchanged—static, circular, and reliant on denying observable reality. Each new scientific milestone leaves its claims looking ever more obsolete and its tactics increasingly desperate. This discovery is not just a triumph for science; it's a reminder that knowledge advances when we ask, “How do we know?”—not “Were you there?”
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