Astronomers have detected the Methuselah of planets, a world many times older than any other known, a remarkable survivor formed in a violent, primordial setting where planets were not thought to exist.

About 800 times more massive than Earth, the planet was born around a yellow, sun-like star about 13 billion years ago. That is about 9 billion years earlier than any planet previously detected and a mere billion years after the big bang that spawned all space and time -- a time, most astronomers believe, when the universe had yet to create the raw material needed to make planets, according to researchers who revealed their findings yesterday

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