Sentences with phrase «massive rocky body»

Not exact matches

Astronomers have long suspected that the young, 12 - million - year - old star hosts a massive planet, since it is surrounded by a dusty disc of debris thought to be created by the collision of rocky bodies and infalling comets.

In the prevailing theory of planet formation, called core accretion, dust grains stick together to form rocky worlds, and some of these rocky bodies then grow massive enough to attract surrounding gas, becoming gas giants like Jupiter.

Similarly, the terms Neptunes and hot Neptunes refer to planets less than about 10 percent of Jupiter's mass, and the term super-Earths refers to those planets that may well be rocky bodies only a few times as massive as Earth.