We are talking about a celestial body that breaks widely accepted cosmological schemes.
Our Solar System has a star that we call the Sun, but you already know that there are billions of stars that inhabit our own galaxy, the Milky Way, which also have their own planets. A recent investigation, A planet and a star have caught the attention of a group of scientists due to their difference in size, never before observed in a solar system.
Revealing the secrets of a planet and its 'ultracold' star
Researchers from Penn State University have published an article in the prestigious Science magazine in which they show the world the discovery of the star LHS 3154nine times less massive than the Sun, and a planet that orbits around itwhich turns out to be 13 times larger than Earth.
That is, the mass ratio between the star and its planet is more than 100 times greater than what we find between the Earth and the Sun. We are talking, by the way, about a type of star called ultracold dwarfwhich is part of a system that seems to go against what was known until now about planetary formation in the cosmos.
The discovery of a planet that is far too massive for its sun is calling into question what was previously understood about the formation of planets and their solar systems, according to #PennState researchers. @SuvrathM @gummiks @HPFspectrograph @PSU_CEHW pic.twitter.com/8m3briPShr
— Penn State Eberly College of Science (@PSUScience) December 6, 2023
Suvrath Mahadevan is co-author of the study, as well as a professor at the university mentioned above. According to the statements collected in the Penn State University websiteSuvrath assures that:
This discovery really highlights how little we know about the universe. We couldn't expect such a heavy planet to exist around a low-mass star.
The Theory of Formation of planets, at least what was known until now, talks about great dust and gas clouds in which the stars and how a disk of said material begins to orbit them, being the origin of the planets around it. However, this professor still cannot explain how such a large planet could form from a star of such low mass.
Read more on in this @universetoday article: https://t.co/9RCJW0VaE8
— Penn State Eberly College of Science (@PSUScience) December 6, 2023
He planet that concerns us, called LHS 3154bhas been discovered thanks to an instrument developed at the North American university, which was nicknamed Planet Finder in Habitable Zones or HPF. The instrument, by the way, is located at the Hobby-Eberly telescope, located at the McDonald Observatory in the state of Texas.
And this discovery is part of the intended use of the instrument developed by scientists at Penn State University. Megan Delamerastronomy student at the educational center, it states that:
Based on the work done with the HPF and other instruments, an object like the one we discovered is extremely rare, so spotting it has been really exciting. Our current theories about planetary formation have trouble explaining what we're seeing.