In the past few years, astronomers have discovered more than a thousand planets outside our solar system.
Most of them belong to the class of so-called "hot Jupiters" and gas giants that are a relatively short distance from their star. The many discovered planets resemble Jupiter and other gas giants in our solar system.
As for planetary scientists, they recently discovered a huge planet far from its star, according to the standards of our solar system.
It turns out that the aforementioned planet is more than 110 times far from its star than the distance separating our Earth from the sun, which contradicts all the agreed theories regarding the formation of planets within stellar systems.
This was reported by the press office of the Dutch "Nova" Center for Scientific Research, citing an article in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
The article stated that it is difficult to explain the existence of planet 2b YSES from the point of view of contemporary theory describing the process of formation of the gas giant. Scientists are unlikely to form the aforementioned planet in a place where it is currently located due to the lack of the material needed to form it.
Astronomers have been interested in, for a long time, where and how such huge planets arise, and whether there are Earth-like planets within them that can preserve life. But astronomers have so far been unable to answer this question due to the absence of photographs and information on the chemical components of planets.
A team that includes scientists from Europe, Chile and the United States under the supervision of Assistant Professor at the University of Leiden, Belgium, Frank Snake, tried to obtain these photographs within the framework of the YSES project, which aims to study the environs of hundreds of young stars that resemble the sun in terms of their dimensions and masses and are located in the constellation Scorpio- Centauri.
Scientists discovered there are 3 huge planets with a mass of 6-12 times the mass of Jupiter, and they were able to obtain their photographs after they extracted them from the light of their stars, using powerful European and Chilean optical telescopes. Among them, the huge planet YSES 2b drew the attention of astronomers for its distance from its star. It turns out that it is 20 times more distant from its star than the distance separating Jupiter from the sun.
Astronomers assumed that Planet 2b YSES was not always in its current orbit. Rather, it was thrown by the gravitational interaction force to the outskirts of the star system, where it was picked up by the gravitational force of another star and moved to a distant orbit.
Source: TASS
read also :
Comments
Post a Comment