Astronomers have confirmed the discovery of Elias 2-24 b, a planet less than a million years old, making it the youngest known planet in the universe. This gas giant, roughly the size of Jupiter, orbits the young star Elias 2-24, which is located about 450 light-years away from Earth. The discovery was made using data from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, which collaborates with NASA. The findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and led by Andrea Bernardi, a doctoral student at the Universidad Diego Portales in Chile. Elias 2-24 b was found within a gap in the debris disk that surrounds its host star. This discovery challenges existing theories about how planets form, as the gap suggests the planet may have cleared its orbit early in its development. Previously, the youngest known planets were those orbiting stars PDS 70 and WISPIT 2, all of which are more than 5 million years old. Lucas Cieza, a professor at the Instituto de Estudios Astrofísicos in Chile and co-author of the study, said the discovery reveals gaps in our current understanding of planet formation. The confirmation of Elias 2-24 b solved a long-standing mystery. Earlier observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile showed a gap in the dusty disk around Elias 2-24, and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope detected a faint point of light within that gap. Scientists had debated whether this could be a planet, as traditional models suggest that planets forming at such distances would take much longer to develop. Bernardi’s team used data from the Keck Observatory Archive, which includes observations from 2018 and 2020, to track the movement of the light over time. This analysis confirmed that the object is a forming planet, not an imaging error or a distant star. The study emphasizes the value of combining observations from different telescopes to verify such discoveries. Elias 2-24 b is currently at the edge of what existing telescopes can detect. However, new instruments like NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, launched on August 30, are expected to make such discoveries easier. The Roman Space Telescope has a more advanced coronagraph, which blocks out the light of the host star, allowing it to detect planets that are otherwise hard to observe.