Two asteroid-sized objects orbiting a famous star have collided, Hubble Space Telescope images suggest. The collision provides a rare look at the violent process of planetary construction around a young star — similar to collisions that probably shaped our own solar system, astronomers report December 18 in Science.
“It’s the first time we’ve ever seen colliding planetesimals outside of our own solar system,” says Jason Wang, an astronomer at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. The event also solves a long-standing mystery about a disappearing exoplanet.
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