A group of researchers at NASA has discovered formation of an alien planet very far from its host star. It is being said that the same could challenge the already known way of formation of planets.

Hubble Space Telescope was used by the team, which helped them find a large gap in the debris disk forming planets. The disk surrounds TW Hydrae, the red dwarf star, which is in the constellation Hydra i. e. some 176 light-years away from Earth.

As per the findings, the gap observed was away from TW Hydrae by around 7.5 billion miles. The distance is equivalent to double the distance shared by sun and Pluto. It is being said that the gap was probably created by a newborn exoplanet, which is almost 28 times the size of Earth.

The team is of the view that the farflung location of the gap imposed problems for the well-known planet-formation theory. The theory says that worlds take tens of millions of years to grow, gradually. Also, gas, rocks and dust are gathered up from protoplanetary disk during the process.

Another idea says that planets form faster after the protoplanetary disk turns gravitationally unstable, thereby collapsing.

"If there is a planet and there is no dust larger than a grain of sand farther out, that would be a huge challenge to traditional planet formation models", said Space Telescope Science Institute's John Debes.