India, Feb. 19 -- University of Birmingham astronomers joined a global team of scientists to discover a distant planetary system that turns scientific understanding of planet formation upside down.
In the Solar System, the inner planets (Mercury to Mars) are rocky, and the outer planets (Jupiter to Neptune) are gaseous. This pattern - rock to gas - has been consistently observed across the Milky Way until now.
Using a European Space Agency (ESA) telescope, the international research team took a closer look at a star called LHS 1903. Publishing their observations inScience, the researchers reveal a system of four planets that breaks this convention. This is the furthest observable planetary system still in the Milky Way - some 116 lightyea...