This is remarkable considering how short a time (on a Universe scale) it takes for planets to form. Planets form in tens of millions of years.

I'm excited to see what they discover over the next 4 years. They haven't yet found orbital motion, and are going to do follow-up observations to check for it.

In addition to those confused by the "The data suggest that the planet’s atmosphere is cloudy." statement. The article just cherry picked a phrase from the paper. It just means, looking at evolutionary models of early stage planet predictions, the light produced by this object is most consistent with "a young planetary-mass body with a dusty or cloudy atmosphere".

Direct link to the paper [PDF]: https://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/e...

> This is remarkable considering how short a time (on a Universe scale) it takes for planets to form. Planets form in tens of millions of years.

So presumably, if you looked at a couple thousand young stars undergoing planet formation you should be able to find at least one, right?

Not so easy, I believe. Those "couple thousand young stars undergoing planet formation" also have to be relatively nearby for our current-day (or near future) telescopes to be able observe the planets forming.

Depending on how far the telescopes can see, there might not be thousands of young stars near enough for planetary formation to be seen.

Kind of fun to think about what the future holds for it. Imagine the iPhone reappearing 4 billion years from now.

For those interested, PD7 70 is approximately 10 million years old. For reference, the Earth is around 4.5 billion.

I’m guessing that the age of the system is defined by “first light” of the star (PDS 70), since once the star lights up, the cloud around it starts evaporating.

Do you mean it's 10 million light years away from us?

No. The star (PDS 70) is 370 light-years away from us. It's age is "about 5.4 million years old" [1]

[1] http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/astronomical-birth-announcement...

Or something important, like a stone chopping tool.

On a planetary timescale, the two happened about simultaneously here.

I think the parent was using it as an example of a simple invention that builds upon many complex discoveries that came before, not as an example of a complex invention itself.

And the invention of stone tools is trivial compared to the "invention" of life. There's always something you can talk about as being "more important", no need to be all snobby about it.