Comets in our solar system orbit the Sun, and sometimes they come too close and are swallowed. On Friday, astronomers announced evidence for a similar event around another star. The results are important for those who theorize about planet formation.

This is an artist's impression of the suspected scene, in which a huge comet-like body at least 62 miles (100 kilometers) wide is falling into a massive star that is a mere 100,000 years old.

Our Sun is 4.6 billion years old, and one question theorists have about its early years is how quickly large objects -- asteroids, comets and protoplanets -- developed out of the leftovers of star formation. The new discovery suggests it can happen pretty quickly.

"This discovery is significant because this is the youngest star ever found with this kind of infall of a comet-like body," said study member Jian Ge, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State. "This detection indicates that solid bodies of 100 kilometers in size can form this early around a star."

Other studies have found evidence for comets and asteroids around other stars. Theorists say comets and asteroids are essentially objects that for whatever reason stopped growing and did not become planets.

The research team examined changes in the star's output that suggested an object fell in. By studying how certain chemical signatures changed, they determined the size of the object. "Something happened on a time scale of days or less that created an enormous change in the spectrum of this star while the astronomers were looking," said Penn State professor Eric Feigelson.

The star, named LkHalpha 234, is about 3,200 light-years away. The observations were made with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at the McDonald Observatory in Texas and will be reported in the May 1 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.