Nearly 900 extrasolar planets have been confirmed to date,
but now for the first time astronomers think they are seeing compelling
evidence for a planet under construction in an unlikely place, at a great
distance from its diminutive red dwarf star.
The keen vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has
detected a mysterious gap in a vast protoplanetary disk of gas and dust
swirling around the nearby star TW Hydrae, located 176 light-years away in the
constellation Hydra (the Sea Serpent). The gap's presence is best explained as
due to the effects of a growing, unseen planet that is gravitationally sweeping
up material and carving out a lane in the disk, like a snow plow.