Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from the Voice of America.

I'm Katie Weaver.

And I'm Mario Ritter Jr.

This program is designed for English learners, so we speak a little slower and we use words and phrases especially written for people

learning English.

On today's program we look to the heavens as Katie reports on a newly formed planet, and

Brian Lynn tells about a space rock orbiting close to Earth. On everyday grammar, we explore

the progressive tense, and then the lesson of the day. But first.

Astronomers have observed a newborn planet that formed in three million years,

a relatively brief time. They say the discovery leads to questions about the current understanding of the speed of planetary

formation.

Space scientists estimate the planet to be around 10 to 20 times the mass of Earth.

It is an exoplanet, meaning a planet outside our solar system.

It is one of the youngest exoplanets ever discovered.

It exists among dense gas and dust, orbiting a young star. The orbiting matter is called a protoplanetary disk.

It provides the materials necessary for planet formation. The star it orbits is not as hot and is

about half as bright as our sun. The star's mass is about 70% that of the sun.

It is in our Milky Way galaxy, about 520 light years from Earth.

A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 9.5 trillion kilometers.

This discovery confirms that planets can be in a cohesive form within 3 million years, which was previously unclear, as Earth took 10 to 20 million years to form,

said Madison Barber, a research student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,

or UNC.

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