PLANETS that form around red dwarfs – the most common type of star in the cosmos – can be strongly influenced by their interstellar neighbours.
Two types of planet have recently been discovered circling red dwarfs at roughly the distance at which the main asteroid belt in our solar system orbits the sun. The planets are either gas giants like Jupiter or “super-Earths” with masses between those of the Earth and Neptune.
How such different planets form at similar distances from similar stars has been a mystery, but Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC says that this is because…
