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Space
Space
Science
Robert Lea

Surprise! Baby exoplanets might look like Smarties candies rather than spheres

An illustartion shows an oblate spheroid planet in a disc of gas around a young star.

Sweet new research suggests that newly forming planets may have a flattened shape  similar to that of a popular British candy. 

A team of researchers from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) in England used computer simulations to model the formation of planets in dense gas disks around young stars. Comparing these models with actual observations, they discovered that the young planets took shapes that defied expectations. 

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