The discovery of a giant planet with characteristics that science cannot explain »Science News

The celestial body is similar in size to Jupiter, but eight times larger.

An international team of scientists discovered A exoplanet It is about the size of Jupiter, but unlike our stellar neighbor, this young planet does not fit into any of the theories explaining the formation of gas giants, which makes it a real mystery for astronomers. to me Max Planck Institute for AstronomyHD 114082 b contains a file Eight times the mass of Jupiter🇧🇷 However, it is two to three times more dense than it should, according to the most accepted theories, to be just a gas giant. 15 million years🇧🇷 The density of this planet is twice that of Earth, which is quite remarkable considering that our planet is composed of rocks with a core of iron and nickel, unlike gaseous rocks that are mainly composed of hydrogen and helium, the lightest element in the universe. Ralph Lonehart, one of the authors of the research published in the journal Astronomy and astrophysicsHe explained that theories indicate that giant planets can form in two ways within a protoplanetary disk of gas and dust distributed around a young central star. The first process, known asbasic accumulationIn the first stage, a solid core of rocky material is expected to form. Once it reaches critical mass, its gravity pulls on the surrounding gas, causing it to accumulate hydrogen and helium to become a giant planet. In the second form it is called disk instabilityDense, gravitationally unstable bundles of gas collapse together, forming a giant planet without a rocky core.

Depending on the planet’s evolution model, it should be a gas It cools at different speeds, thus determining the temperature of the young gas giant planets. In this way, they can experience what scientists call a “cold start” or “hot start,” the characteristics that determine the behavior of these celestial bodies. After calculating the mass HD 114082b And the period of its orbit, the scientists found that the combination of mass and size does not fit the evolution of hot-start stars, and although it fits hot-start stars a little better, it does not fit all assumptions. Lonhardt showed that for current theoretical models, HD 114082 b is too small for its mass, so it has Very large hard core, or the models are wrong and the rate at which the gas giants cool is not well calculated. It could be both. 🇧🇷All we can say is that we still don’t really understand the formation of giant planets.”he added.