Astronomers have discovered a young, hot star the age of a teenage sun shrouded by an intense layer of space dust that could be hiding a multitude of Pluto-sized dwarf planets.

The dust surrounding the star (or its protoplanetary disk) is apparently in a transitioning stage of star system development. The star, identified as HD 107146, is about 90 light years away from Earth.

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When these disks develop during the early stages of star formation, its dust appears to be uniform in size. The dust is generated by frequent collisions of asteroids and comets. Only few dust disks remain in mature solar systems that have completed forming its planets, however.

HD 107146 possesses a disk that is too dense as opposed to regular disks from young star systems. This means this debris disk could be forming Pluto-sized planetesimals in its outer reaches. Other dwarf planets in this system nearer their sun are already complete.

This particular star is unique since this event is the opposite of what primordial disks usually do, according to lead author of the study, Luca Ricci from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The presence of these Pluto-sized planets, however, can disturb other planetisimals since their gravitational forces can lead to more collisions and denser dust clouds. This phenomenon was observed from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observatory located in Chile.

The disk of HD 107146 also has a 750 million miles wide gap that could mean an Earth sized planet swept through this region, clearing away debris and dust.

This finding support the theory that Earth sized exoplanets can also be located in not so common ranges of orbit from its central star.

Study co-author Stuart Corder said this star system offers a glimpse of our earlier solar system since its star resembles the young Sun. This study was published in the Astrophysical Journal.

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