The slow but persistent collisions between asteroids in our Solar System generate a tenuous cloud of dust known as the zodiacal light (because of the light the dust reflects). In the young Solar System, such collisions were more common and the dust production rate should have been many times larger¹. Yet copious dust in the zodiacal region around stars much younger than the Sun has rarely been found². Dust is known to orbit around several hundred main-sequence stars³, but this dust is cold and comes from a Kuiper-belt analogous region out beyond the orbit of Neptune. Despite many searches, only a few main-sequence stars reveal warm (> 120 K) dust analogous to zodiacal dust near the Earth^{3, 4, 5}. Signs of planet formation (in the form of collisions between bodies) in the regions of stars corresponding to the orbits of the terrestrial planets in our Solar System have therefore been elusive. Here we report an exceptionally large amount of warm, small, silicate dust particles around the solar-type star BD+20 307 (HIP 8920, SAO 75016). The composition and quantity of dust could be explained by recent frequent or huge collisions between asteroids or other 'planetesimals' whose orbits are being perturbed by a nearby planet.

1. Gemini Observatory, 670 North A'ohoku Place, Hilo, Hawaii 96720, USA
2. Department of Physics and Astronomy and Center for Astrobiology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095-1547, USA
3. Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 5241 Broad Branch Road, NW, Washington DC 20015, USA

Correspondence to: Inseok Song¹ Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to I.S. (Email: song@gemini.edu).

Received 22 November 2004; Accepted 18 May 2005

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