Astronomers Discover A Rapidly Forming Alien Planet
Date
11/24/2024 1:44:08 AM
(MENAFN- AzerNews)
By Alimat Aliyeva
In a discovery that challenges current understanding of the rate
of planet formation, astronomers say it takes a newborn planet just
3 million years to form around a young star,
Azernews reports.
This "baby" planet, whose mass is about 10-20 times that of
Earth, is one of the youngest celestial bodies outside our Solar
System, known as exoplanets. It is located next to the remnants of
a dense disk of gas and dust orbiting its parent star, called the
protoplanetary disk, which provides the ingredients for planet
formation.
The star orbiting it is expected to be an orange dwarf-type
star, which is less hot and less massive than the Sun. The star's
mass is about 70 percent of the Sun's mass. The alien planet is
located about 520 light-years from Earth in our Milky Way galaxy. A
light-year is the distance light travels in one year, which is
approximately 9.5 trillion kilometers.
Astronomers say this discovery confirms that planets could form
in just 3 million years. Previously, it was believed that the
formation of Earth took between 10-20 million years, and the
process was not fully understood. On the other hand, giant planets
form faster than the collapse of the disk because they require a
lot of gas from the disk. However, it takes 5-10 million years for
the disks to decay.
The planet, named "IRAS 04125+2902 b" and "TIDYE-1b," orbits its
star every 8.8 days at a distance about one-fifth of the distance
between Mercury, the innermost planet in our solar system, and the
Sun. Its mass is between that of Earth, the largest of the rocky
planets in our solar system, and Neptune, the smallest of the gas
giants. The alien planet is less dense than Earth and about 11
times its diameter. Its chemical composition remains unknown.
The researchers suspect that the planet formed further from its
star and later migrated inward. Using a technique called "transit,"
they recorded a drop in the brightness of the parent star as it
passed in front of the planet from the point of view of an observer
on Earth.
This discovery was made by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey
Satellite (TESS) Space Telescope.
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