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Scientists have discovered an unusually large exoplanet in orbit around b Centauri, a massive two-star system visible to the naked eye. With a total weight of about 10 suns, it is now the heaviest star system known to host a planet.
Let’s discuss the ins and outs of this invention, namely detail It was published today in Nature. The newly discovered planet, called “b Cen (AB) b”, is likely a gas giant and heavier than the 10 planets combined, making it one of the largest ever discovered. It orbits the binary system b Centauri, which is 325 light-years from Earth and has a combined mass of about 10 suns. At 52 billion miles from its parent star, the planet has one of the widest orbits ever discovered. In comparison, Pluto orbits the sun about 3.3 billion miles, so yeah, that’s an incredible separation.
So far, no planet has been found in orbit around a star system weighing more than three solar masses. Astronomers did not believe that planets could form around systems like this, forcing a massive rethinking of what might have happened in terms of planetary structure and the conditions under which planets could form. Markus Jansson, an astronomer at Stockholm University and the study’s first author, said what excites him most about the discovery is the “astonishing diversity” of exoplanet systems.
He wrote: “It seems that wherever we look – around small or large stars, individual stars or binary stars, living stars or the remains of dead stars – we always find planets in some form, even in places we thought were impossible. ” . in a letter.
The presence of planets in this star system is surprising. Young stars have a protoplanetary disk around them, from which the planets eventually emerge. However, hot star systems like b Centauri shouldn’t have helped planet formation, because of the abundance of ultraviolet and X-rays. This high-energy radiation “tends to destroy the disk in a very short time,” Janson said, and it’s not expected that this would give planets enough time to form on the disk before disappearing. However, there are – entire planets around the B Centauri system.
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Jansson and colleagues detected b Cen (AB) b using the SPHERE Exoplanet Imager at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, on March 20, 2019 and then again on April 10, 2021. Astronomers used high-contrast imaging technology to locate planets, distinguishing them in light. The dim light coming from this planet is all bright light coming from the star system itself.
The deformable mirror in the SPHERE can quickly deform against the effects of fog caused by Earth’s atmosphere, while the chronograph blocks excess light coming from the target source. A special technique, known as angular differential imaging, eliminates extraneous optical effects. Interestingly, follow-up research showed that the planet was observed 20 years ago by a different ESO instrument, but was not correctly identified at that time.
A careful observation is how the ratio between the masses of the star system and its planets closely matches that of our Sun and Jupiter. But this is where the comparison ends, because Centauri’s b scale is much larger, with a planet 10 times that of Jupiter and an orbit a hundred times larger.
I asked Janson if b Cen (AB) b was actually a brown dwarf (so -called failed star), or if it qualifies as an entirely new planetary type. He replied that brown dwarfs “would be hotter than the ones we observe, so we can rule out that option,” but “a new class of planets is a possibility,” adding that astronomers “will have to study larger samples of similar systems before we can say anything.” conclusive on that.” “.
The team is currently conducting a survey called BEAST, which scans 85 stars with properties similar to b Centauri. BEAST can show us how common these types of planets are, while also explaining how they formed.
“The discovery of planets in system b Centauri and other future results from BEAST will provide input for planetary formation theorists to refine their theories, and hopefully discover physics that allows a wide variety of planets to be observed, both around massive stars and at the same time circling more many stars that are similar to the Sun and smaller.
From an astrobiological perspective, Janson said Centaurus B “perhaps one of the worst places in the galaxy to host life.” Together, the pair released massive amounts of ultraviolet light and X-rays, “which would sterilize any surface they come into contact with,” so “life on any surface in the system would be highly unlikely.” However, Jansson has not ruled out the possibility of life in the subterranean ocean, consistent with persistent speculation about basic life being found on Jupiter’s moons. Europe or the moon of Saturn Enceladus.
Ultimately, the new discovery “gives us a new and important piece of the puzzle about how planets form, the understanding we need to have if we are to understand where we came from and how we fit into the universe as a whole,” Jansson said.
again: Two failed stars in our cosmic environment seem to have streaks?
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