Fomalhaut is one of the brightest stars in the night sky and is about 25 light-years away, making it a galaxy amenable to detailed observations. It's also a young star, only about 440 million years old.

At that age, stars like Fomalhaut are surrounded by active debris disks made of rock and dust from collisions between planetesimals. Exoplanets form in these disks, and one of the hot topics in exoplanet science concerns how planets form in these circumstellar disks.

Finding exoplanets in these disks is challenging. Astronomers use clues found in the shape and morphology of the disks to try to infer the presence of exoplanets. Fomalhaut's disk is warped in an unusual way, and new research suggests that the warping is caused by a massive planet orbiting the star.

Two separate papers prese

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