George Dvorsky

Back in 1983, astronomers discovered a star 450 light-years away that was surrounded by a cloud of dust — a textbook example of a solar system in the making. Now, nearly thirty years later, the cloud has suddenly and mysteriously disappeared.

This discovery could mean that everything we thought we knew about the birth of planets is wrong.

This is one of those observations that, on the face of it, doesn't make a lot of sense. Astronomers have always believed that it takes hundreds of thousands of years — if not millions — for the dust orbiting a young star to congeal and form planets. This recent observation, however, indicates that planets may form significantly faster than we thought. Or alternatively, that these dust clouds behave in ways unknown to us.

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http://io9.com/5923648/why-did-all-the-planet+forming-dust-around-t...