Skip to content
  • Happy Health
  • Happy Mindset
  • Animal Wonders
  • About Us
    • Team
  • Subscribe
Menu
  • Happy Health
  • Happy Mindset
  • Animal Wonders
  • About Us
    • Team
  • Subscribe
Happy News

Graduate Student Discovers Youngest Planet Ever Found

University of North Carolina graduate student Madyson Barber spent three years scanning the universe for newborn planets one star cluster at a time, and her persistence paid off when she identified the youngest transiting planet ever discovered, a Jupiter sized world named TIDYE-1b that is only 3 million years old. To put that age into perspective, if Earth were a 50 year old person, this baby planet would be a 2 week old infant, making it an incredibly rare find since astronomers have struggled to spot planets younger than 10 million years due to thick view blocking dust disks surrounding newborn stars. Barber found the planet under the direction of UNC Chapel Hill associate professor Andrew Mann while working in his Young Worlds Lab, and their groundbreaking discovery was published in the international science journal Nature with 38 authors listing Barber and Mann as the lead researchers. The team discovered TIDYE-1b by watching for repeated dips in a star’s brightness, which happens when a planet passes in front of its star and blocks some of the light, but what makes this particular system truly bizarre is that the planet’s disk is misaligned by more than 60 degrees from where it should be.

Every astronomer who looks at the misalignment immediately thinks something weird happened because basic physics says the star, planet and disk should all line up perfectly, yet somehow this baby planet broke all the normal rules of planetary formation. Barber is now planning a trip to the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii for further observations and has proposed using the James Webb Space Telescope to unlock more mysteries about how TIDYE-1b formed in such an unusual configuration. Studying young planets like this 3 million year old infant is essential to understanding how planets form and evolve over billions of years, and Barber’s discovery proves that astronomers should be actively searching for more of these rare baby worlds to draw even bigger conclusions about our universe.

Source: https://www.unc.edu/discover/graduate-student-discovers-youngest-transiting-planet-ever/

PrevPreviousScientists Just Weighed Planet, Here’s How
NextStudents Fix Cars & Give Them To Single MomsNext

Recent Articles

Happy News

A 13-Year-Old Found A Coin In A Berlin Field And It Just Made History

April 30, 2026

When a 13-year-old boy named Lenny walked through a field in the Spandau district of Berlin in 2025, he noticed a small, unremarkable object half-hidden in the soil and picked it up, correctly sensing it was something worth showing to an expert. When archaeologists at the interactive dig lab PETRI

Read More
Happy News

The Supreme Court Said The Tariffs Were Illegal, Now FedEx And UPS Are Sending Money Back

April 29, 2026

Here is some genuinely good news for your wallet. In February, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a sweeping set of tariffs that had been driving up prices on imported goods were unconstitutional — and now the refund process has officially begun. This week, the federal government opened a portal

Read More
Happy News

Amsterdam Is The First Capital City In The World To Ban Fossil Fuel Ads

April 29, 2026

Starting May 1, 2026, the billboards, bus shelters, metro platforms, and tram stops of Amsterdam will be cleared of advertisements for flights, cruises, petrol-powered cars, gas heating contracts, and meat products, as the Dutch capital becomes the first in the world to enforce a legally binding ban on fossil fuel

Read More
« Previous Next »
  • Privacy Notice
  • Accessibility Notice
  • Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
  • Unsubscribe
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Privacy Notice
  • Accessibility Notice
  • Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
  • Unsubscribe
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
Copyright © 2026 HappyNews.