Astronomers have found a planetary system around a red dwarf star where a rocky world orbits beyond two gas giants, challenging standard models of how planets form. The discovery around LHS 1903 suggests planets may arise sequentially rather than all at once.
Researchers led by Thomas Wilson at the University of Warwick identified the four-planet system using data from multiple telescopes, including the European Space Agency's Cheops satellite. The planets follow an unexpected order of rocky, gaseous, gaseous and rocky, with the outermost world appearing to have formed in a gas-depleted environment after the others had already taken shape.