Alien Earth May Be Forming Around Nearby Star (Photos) -

Scientists may have just snapped baby photos of an alien Earth.

The planet-forming disk around a nearby sunlike star called TW Hydrae sports a gap at about the same distance from the star as Earth lies from the sun, new images captured by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile reveal.

"The new ALMA images show the disk in unprecedented detail, revealing a series of concentric, dusty, bright rings and dark gaps, including intriguing features that suggest a planet with an Earth-like orbit is forming there," Andrews added.

The ultimate size of the newly forming planet is unknown. It may grow up to be about as hefty as Earth, or it could end up as a "super-Earth" (a world more massive than our own, but substantially less massive than the ice giants Uranus and Neptune), researchers said.

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