Alien solar system found.

A SCOTS-LED team of astronomers are one step closer to learning if we are alone in the universe.

They have found the best evidence yet that planets are circling other suns.

The team at Edinburgh's UK Astronomy Technology Centre found a distorted disc of cloud dust around the star Fomalhaut.

They say life on this new planet is unlikely as its constellation, Piscis Austrinus, is under constant bombardment by comets.

However, the system is in its infancy - 200 million-years-old compared to our 4.5 billion- year-old Sun.

Head researcher Dr Wayne Holland said: "We were amazed to find the disc is bent about the star. This strongly suggests an orbiting planet.

"If that is the case then why shouldn't there be planetary systems like our own that contain Earth-like planets?

"It must be odds-on that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, and I think one day we will find it - or they will find us."

Astronomers searched that part of space after heat emissions were found coming from it in a 1980s study.

But they only spotted the planet after using new cameras from Edinburgh's Royal Observatory and the world's biggest telescope - the James Clerk Maxwell in Hawaii.