{"id":378347,"date":"2026-09-18T10:44:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T17:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/?p=378347"},"modified":"2026-09-18T10:44:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T17:44:12","slug":"elias-2-24-b-is-now-confirmed-the-youngest-planet-ever-found","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/elias-2-24-b-is-now-confirmed-the-youngest-planet-ever-found\/","title":{"rendered":"Elias 2-24 b is now confirmed: the youngest planet ever found"},"content":{"rendered":"

Astronomers have now confirmed the protoplanet Elias 2-24 b. Based on a Keck Observatory reanalysis<\/strong>, and supported by earlier detections from ALMA and the European Southern Observatory, it may be the youngest exoplanet found so far: a giant world less than 1 million years old, much younger than the previous record holders, which were all older than 5 million years.<\/p>\n

\r\n
\r\n
\r\n
\r\n \"Stellarium\"\r\n <\/div>\r\n
\r\n Stellarium<\/span>\r\n Download<\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n
\r\n <\/path><\/path><\/text><\/svg>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n
\r\n <\/span>\r\n <\/div>\r\n
\r\n \r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Keck reanalysis, building on those earlier ALMA and ESO detections, followed the source from 2018 to 2020 and showed that Elias 2-24 b moves with the system<\/strong>. That rules out a background star or some imaging artifact and pins it down as a forming planet bound to the system. And it’s a strange one to catch this early. It’s orbiting about 10 to 11 times farther from its star than Jupiter sits from the Sun, even though core accretion models say a Jupiter-like planet should take millions of years to form at that kind of distance.<\/p>\n\n

The Elias 2-24 system lies about 450 light-years away in Ophiuchus. Its star is only 200,000 to 400,000 years<\/strong> old and still accreting, and the models suggest the embedded planet probably is too. Current estimates put Elias 2-24 b somewhere around 2 to 14 Jupiter masses.<\/p>\n\n

If you follow planet formation, this one is worth your time. It lends real support to faster formation ideas such as disk instability, and it’s also a good reminder of what archival astronomy can do when older observations get revisited carefully.<\/p>\n\n

The evidence is already there in the combined Keck Observatory, ALMA, and ESO data. The next step may come from NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman<\/a><\/strong> Space Telescope, which could tell us whether Elias 2-24 b is a rare outlier or a sign that giant planets sometimes form by a much faster route.<\/p>\n

\r\n
\r\n
\r\n
\r\n \"Celestia\"\r\n <\/div>\r\n
\r\n Celestia<\/span>\r\n Download<\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n
\r\n <\/path><\/path><\/text><\/svg>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n
\r\n <\/span>\r\n <\/div>\r\n
\r\n \r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Astronomers have now confirmed the protoplanet Elias 2-24 b. Based on a Keck Observatory reanalysis, and supported by earlier detections from ALMA and the European Southern Observatory, it may be the youngest exoplanet found so far: a giant world less than 1 million years old, much younger than the previous record holders, which were all … Continue reading “Elias 2-24 b is now confirmed: the youngest planet ever found”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9349,"featured_media":378346,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-378347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9349"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":378348,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378347\/revisions\/378348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378347"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=378347"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=378347"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=378347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}