We've never seen anything quite like this.

For the first time, astronomers have actually found a baby planet responsible for carving out gaps in the dusty disk surrounding a newborn star.

Previous observations of such disks showed gaps, but the objects sculpting them remained elusive to our telescopes.

The discovery of WISPIT-2b, as the exoplanet has been named, finally confirms long-held theories about how baby planets form and grow. It represents something of a game changer for planetary astronomy, actually: now scientists can flesh out their theories, confident that they are, indeed, correct.

"Dozens of theory papers have been written about these observed disk gaps being caused by protoplanets, but no one's ever found a definitive one until today," says astronomer Laird Close of

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