• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Densest Ultra-Short Period Planet Discovered 750 Light-Years From Earth

November 18, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

An international team of astronomers has detected a record-breaking planet orbiting a Sun-like star. The system is called K2-360 and it has two known planets K2-360 b and K2-360 c. The innermost orbits the star in just 21 hours. It is an ultra-short period super-Earth, rocky but larger than our planet. That is not all; data indicate that it is the densest such planet we know of.

K2-360 b has a radius just shy of 1.6 times that of Earth, giving it a volume four times as large. Its mass, though, is 7.7 times that of our planets, making its density almost twice as much as our little Earth. It is as dense as lead.

Advertisement

“K2-360 b is truly remarkable – it’s as dense as lead, packing nearly 8 Earth masses into a ball only slightly larger than our planet,” lead author John Livingston, from the Astrobiology Center in Tokyo, Japan, said in a statement. “This makes it the densest known planet among the class of ‘ultra-short period’ planets [with precise parameters], which orbit their stars in less than a day.”

K2-360 b is a rocky world, likely covered in an ocean of magma due to its very close proximity to its star. However, it might not have always been like that. It is possible that it used to have a thick gassy atmosphere like Uranus or Neptune, and moved inward. The star would have then eroded the atmosphere leaving the rocky planet behind.

“This planet gives us a glimpse into the possible fate of some close-in worlds, where only the dense, rocky cores remain after billions of years of evolution,” added co-author Davide Gandolfi from the University of Turin.

There is a second planet in the system K2-360 c. It doesn’t pass in front of the star (unlike its companion) from our point of view. This indicates that their respective orbits are skewed. Looking at the changes in starlight, astronomers have estimated that it is 15 times more massive than Earth and orbits every 9.8 days. And it might be responsible for what happened to its smaller sibling.

Advertisement

“Our dynamical models indicate that K2-360 c could have pushed the inner planet into its current tight orbit through a process called high-eccentricity migration,” explained co-author Alessandro Trani from the Niels Bohr Institute. “This involves gravitational interactions that first make the inner planet’s orbit very elliptical, before tidal forces gradually circularize it close to the star. Alternatively, tidal circularization could have been induced by the spin-axial tilt of the planet.”

To explain its remarkable density, the team estimates that the planet is rich in iron located in an enormous core. This iron core is believed to account for 48 percent of the planet’s mass – that’s almost four Earth’s worth of iron.

“Our interior structure models indicate that K2-360 b probably has a substantial iron core surrounded by a rocky mantle,” stated co-author Mahesh Herath, a PhD candidate at McGill University. “Its surface may be covered in magma due to the intense heat it receives from its star. Understanding planets like this helps us piece together how terrestrial planets form and evolve under different conditions throughout the galaxy.”

The study is published in Scientific Reports.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Cricket-Manchester test likely to be postponed after India COVID-19 case
  2. EU to attend U.S. trade meeting put in doubt by French anger
  3. Soccer-West Ham win again, Leicester and Napoli falter
  4. Was Jesus A Hallucinogenic Mushroom? One Scholar Certainly Thought So

Source Link: Densest Ultra-Short Period Planet Discovered 750 Light-Years From Earth

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Did You Know The World’s Largest Waterfall Is Underwater?
  • Video Game Study Found Out What People Do When The World Ends, And It’s Exactly What You’d Expect
  • How Do We Predict The Weather? Find Out More In Issue 40 Of CURIOUS – Out Now
  • You Should Never Leave These Foods In Your Fridge Door (But We Bet You Do)
  • These Gullies On Mars Look Carved – We Might Finally Know What Created Them
  • Potential Environmental Trigger For Autism Identified, 3I/ATLAS’s Tail Appears To Have Changed Direction, And Much More This Week
  • Spaghetti Has Inner Secrets We’re Only Just Learning About
  • How Far Back In Time Could You Go And Still Understand English?
  • We Now Know How The First People Reached America – And It Wasn’t On Foot
  • Two Major Coral Species Now Functionally Extinct In Florida Keys, After Record-Breaking Marine Heatwave
  • A “Super-Earth” In The Habitable Zone Is Half The Distance To Comparable Worlds
  • Adorable But Critically Endangered Bornean Orangutan Born In Conservation Success
  • How Did The FDA Settle On The “2,000 Calories Per Day” Guideline?
  • Comet 3I/ATLAS Losing At Least Two Kangaroos’ Worth Of Dust Every Second
  • Mummified Dinosaur Duo Prove They Had Hooves, Marking “The First Confirmed Hooved Reptile”
  • What Do The Numbers On Your Toaster Really Mean?
  • NASA Vs. Elon Musk: Is A Moon Landing This Decade Off The Cards?
  • Scientists Explored Some Of The Deepest Parts Of The Ocean And Spotted Some Seriously Weird Deep-Sea Creatures
  • 500-Meter-Tall Megatsunami Struck Remote Alaskan Fjord After Massive Landslide
  • 3I/ATLAS, CKM Syndrome, And Mosquitoes’ Final Frontier
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version