While we're on the subject of planetary formation, here's two interesting articles from Space Daily.
The first one is about a somewhat discouraging study done by researchers at the University of Colorado, which suggests that planetary formation of any kind may be quite rare: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/extrasolar-01e.html The second article talks about a fascinating paper written by Dr Charles Lineweaver, which says that Earth is 1.8 billion years younger (give or take 0.9 billion years) than the majority of the exoplanets discovered right now. He extends that observation into a hypothesis that our solar system is a very recent newcomer to the stellar scene. (Write your own answer to Fermi's Paradox here. ;-) ): http://www.spacedaily.com/news/extrasolar-01c.html Kevin Street
