Red Ice News

The Future is the Past

Suicidal planet seems on death spiral into star
New to Red Ice? Start Here!

Suicidal planet seems on death spiral into star

Source: usatoday.com

Astronomers have found what appears to be a gigantic suicidal planet.
The odd, fiery planet is so close to its star and so large that it is triggering tremendous plasma tides on the star. Those powerful tides are in turn warping the planet's zippy less-than-a-day orbit around its star.

The result: an ever-closer tango of death, with the planet eventually spiraling into the star.

It is a slow death. The planet WASP-18b has maybe a million years to live, said planet discoverer Coel Hellier, a professor of astrophysics at Keele University in England. Hellier's report on the suicidal planet is in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

"It's causing its own destruction by creating these tides," Hellier said.

The star is called WASP-18 and the planet is WASP-18b because of the Wide Angle Search for Planets team that found them.

The planet circles a star that is in the constellation Phoenix and is about 325 light-years away from Earth, which means it is in Earth's galactic neighborhood. A light-year is about 5.8 trillion miles.

The planet is 1.9 million miles (3 million kilometers) from its star, 1/50th of the distance between Earth and its star, the sun. And because of that the temperature is about 3,800 degrees (2,100 Celsius).

Its size — 10 times bigger than Jupiter — and its proximity to its star make it likely to die, Hellier said.

Think of how the distant moon pulls Earth's oceans to form twice-daily tides. The effect the odd planet has on its star is thousands of times stronger, Hellier said. The star's tidal bulge of plasma may extend hundreds of miles, he said.

Like most planets outside Earth's solar system, this planet was not seen directly by a telescope. Astronomers found it by seeing dips in light from the star every time the planet came between the star and Earth.

So far astronomers have found more than 370 planets outside the solar system. This one is "yet another weird one in the exoplanet menagerie," said planet specialist Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

It is so unusual to find a suicidal planet that University of Maryland astronomer Douglas Hamilton questioned whether there was another explanation. While it is likely that this is a suicidal planet, Hamilton said it also is possible that some basic physics calculations that all astronomers rely on could be dead wrong.

The answer will become apparent in less than a decade if the planet seems to be further in a death spiral, he said.

Article from: USAToday.com
Image credit: CARREAU/ESA/Nature

Comments

We're Hiring

We are looking for a professional video editor, animator and graphics expert that can join us full time to work on our video productions.

Apply

Help Out

Sign up for a membership to support Red Ice. If you want to help advance our efforts further, please:

Donate

Tips

Send us a news tip or a
Guest suggestion

Send Tip

Related News

Life in Space: Scientists develop embryo among stars in planet colonisation breakthrough
Life in Space: Scientists develop embryo among stars in planet colonisation breakthrough
Star Wars: DARPA's Death Ray Begins Testing
Star Wars: DARPA's Death Ray Begins Testing

Archives Pick

Red Ice T-Shirts

Red Ice Radio

3Fourteen

Con Inc., J6 Political Prisoners & The Pedophile Problem
Kim Coulter - Con Inc., J6 Political Prisoners & The Pedophile Problem
Why European Culture, Art and Beauty Matter
Gifts - Why European Culture, Art and Beauty Matter

TV

Laughter: The New Weapon Of The Far-Right
Laughter: The New Weapon Of The Far-Right
London’s Fourth Plinth To Get Fat Black “Everywoman” Statue
London’s Fourth Plinth To Get Fat Black “Everywoman” Statue

RSSYoutubeGoogle+iTunesSoundCloudStitcherTuneIn

Design by Henrik Palmgren © Red Ice Privacy Policy