A planet has been discovered with ten times the mass of Jupiter, but which orbits its star in less than one Earth-day.
The planet, called WASP-18b, belongs to a now-common class of extrasolar planets known as ‘hot Jupiters’ — massive planets that are thought to have formed far from their host stars, and migrated inwards over time. WASP-18b is so massive, and so close to its star — only about three stellar radii away — that tidal interactions between star and planet should have caused the planet to spiral inwards to its destruction in less than a million years.
Full article on ScienceDaily
0 comments:
Post a Comment