Unknown treasure trove of planets found hiding in dust

Tech Explorist
A new study has found that Super-Earths and Neptune-sized planets could be forming around young stars. Observing a sampling of youthful planets in a star-forming area in the constellation Taurus, specialists observed a significant number of them to be encompassed by structures that can best be clarified as follows made by imperceptible, youthful planets really taking shape.
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, or ALMA, comprising 45 radio antennas in Chile’s Atacama Desert, the team performed a survey of young stars in the Taurus star-forming region, a vast cloud of gas and dust located a modest 450 light-years from Earth.
When the researchers imaged 32 stars surrounded by protoplanetary disks, they found that 12 of them—40 percent—have rings and gaps, structures that according to the team’s measurements and calculations can be best explained by the presence of nascent planets.
Paper’s lead author, Feng Long said, “This is fascinating because it is the first time that exoplanet statistics, which suggest that super-Earths and Neptunes are the most common type of planets, coincide with observations of protoplanetary disks.”