A planet which is so black it eats light, rather than reflecting it back into space is plunging helplessly towards its parent star, a new study has revealed.
The scorching hot planet WASP-12b is blacker than tarmac, and absorbs at least 94% of visible starlight that falls on it.
It orbits a yellow dwarf around 466 light-years away from us, in the constellation Leo.
It is one of a class of so-called “hot Jupiters,” gigantic, gaseous planets that orbit very close to their host star and are heated to extreme temperatures.
But as if things weren’t bad enough on the surface of WASP-12b, it’s also spiralling towards its parent star, researchers at Cornell University have said.
The pre-print paper is on the Arxiv server.
Read more: Mysterious “rogue planet” could be even weirder than we thought
The planet’s atmosphere is so hot that most molecules are unable to survive on the blistering day side of the planet, where the temperature is 2537 Celsius.
Researchers at Cornell used NASA’s planet-hunting telescope TESS to scan the planet in late 2019 and early 2020, ScienceAlert reports.
The researchers were able to confirm that its orbit is decaying and in just 2.9 million years’ time, it will plunge into its star.
That’s a very short period in space terms, and means it will meet its doom even earlier than the 10 million years predicted from atmospheric stripping, ScienceAlert reports.
The researchers write, “Our TESS transit and occultation timing investigations confirm that the planet’s orbit is changing.
‘“Our finding indicates and orbital decay lifetime of 2.9 million years, shorter than the estimated mass-loss timescale of 300 million years.
“We also update the planetary physical parameters and greatly improve on their precision.
Our study highlights the power of long-term high-precision (both in flux and timing accuracy) ground and space-based transit and occultation observations for understanding orbital evolution of close-in giant planets.”
Read more: Astronomers find closest black hole to Earth
Another planet in the WASP system, WASP-104b is even darker.
According to researchers at Keele University in the UK, it absorbs more than 97 to 99 percent of light, and is also a hot Jupiter.
Like most hot Jupiters, WASP-104b is tidally locked, meaning one side always faces its host star.
WASP-104b has a permanent day side and permanent night side - and it's so close to the star, a distance of around 2.6 million miles, that it takes just 1.75 days to complete a full orbit.
This means that the day side is so hot clouds can't form, and clouds are typically very reflective, like on Venus.
Instead, WASP-104b has a thick, hazy atmosphere, probably containing atomic sodium and potassium, which absorb light in the visible spectrum, making the planet very dark on the day side.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/black-planet-fiery-death-nasa-wasp-165143334.html
2020-12-08 17:00:56Z
CBMiS2h0dHBzOi8vYXUubmV3cy55YWhvby5jb20vYmxhY2stcGxhbmV0LWZpZXJ5LWRlYXRoLW5hc2Etd2FzcC0xNjUxNDMzMzQuaHRtbNIBU2h0dHBzOi8vYXUubmV3cy55YWhvby5jb20vYW1waHRtbC9ibGFjay1wbGFuZXQtZmllcnktZGVhdGgtbmFzYS13YXNwLTE2NTE0MzMzNC5odG1s
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "One of the blackest planets in our galaxy is plunging to its doom, scientists say - Yahoo News Australia"
Post a Comment