‘Completely new phenomenon’: Alien planet is causing its star to cook it to death
Astronomers captured the first proof of a “planet with a death wish” – an extraterrestrial world which is in orbit so close to its star and so quickly that the star cooks it with stellar explosions.
The planet, called HIP 67522 B, is a vaporous planet the size of Jupiter’s size on an orbit tight of seven days around its host star, Hip 67522.
But these orbits disturb the star magnetic fieldcausing huge stellar eruptions to explode on the planet and shrink it. This marks the first time that a planet was observed influencing his star host, scientists reported in a study published on July 2 in the journal Nature.
“The planet seems to trigger particularly energetic thrusts”, study the first author Ekaterina IlinAn astrophysicist at the Dutch institute for astronomy radio, said in a press release. “The waves it sends along the magnetic field lines of the star launches the thrusts at specific moments. But the energy of the enlightening rockets is much higher than the energy of the waves. We believe that the waves trigger explosions that await to occur.”
Stars are gigantic balls of burning plasma whose loaded particles or ions swirl on their surfaces to create magnetic fields. Because the magnetic field lines cannot cross, sometimes these fields knotted before slamming suddenly to launch radiation gusts called solar eruptionswhich are sometimes accompanied by huge surface plasma terminals called coronal mass ejections.
Because many planets, including the earth, have magnetic fields, astronomers have long wondered if the planets with close orbits around their stars could disturb enough powerful stellar magnetic fields to trigger explosions.
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To investigate this question, astronomers have carried out a wide scanning of stars using NASA Transit survey satellite (Tess), which finds exoplanets by detecting the characteristic gradation of the light of the stars when the planets pass in front of them. After pointing out the hip 67522 as worthy of interest, astronomers used the exoplanet satellite (Cheops) of the European Space Agency to investigate more.
“We quickly asked for observation time with Cheops, which can target individual stars on demand, ultra precisely,” said Ilin. “With Cheops, we saw more lighting rockets, bringing the total number to 15, almost all coming in our direction while the planet passed through the star as we see from the earth.”
An element of vital proof was that these lighting rockets occurred when the planet passed the star. This suggests that the planet brings together energy because it orbit and uses it to “whisk” the magnetic field lines of the star like a rope. When this shock wave passes on the ground to the surface of the star, a powerful rocket bursts.
These lightning rockets slowly remove the diffuse atmosphere of the planet, the layer by layer. The researchers predict that, although HIP 67522 B is as large as Jupiter now, it could shrink the size of Neptune in the next 100 million years.
To deepen this primary phenomenon of its kind, researchers plan to take more readings with Tess, Cheops and other exoplanet telescopes, such as the next Plato space telescopewhich should be launched in 2026.
“I have a million questions because it is a completely new phenomenon, so the details are still not clear,” said Ilin. “There are two things which, I think, are the most important to do now. The first is to follow in different wavelengths (Cheops covers visible infrared wavelengths) to discover what type of energy is released in these rockets – for example ultraviolet and X -rays are particularly bad for exoplanet.
“The second is to find and study other similar star planet systems; by going from a single case to a group of 10 to 100 systems, theoretical astronomers will have something to work,” she added.
