technology

A ‘hellish’ exoplanet is being warped to the shape of an American football by gravity


An artist’s illustration of WASP-121b (NASA, ESA, and J. Olmsted (STScI))

A ‘hellish’ exoplanet is being warped to the shape of American football by gravitational pressure of parent star.

The scorching hot world is called WASP-121b and was picked up by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2015.

At over 90 light years from Earth, humankind will never visit this planet and nor would we want to. It’s so close to its host star that not only is it being warped by gravity, it’s almost being turned into a star itself.

‘The planet is being evaporated by its host star to the point that we can see metal atoms escaping the upper atmosphere where they can interact with the planet’s magnetic field,’ said Drake Deming, co-author of a paper about the planet that was published in the Astronomical Journal.

Deming, who is an astronomy professor at the University of Maryland, explains that planets in this situation are known as ‘ultra-hot Jupiters’. They’re massive gas giants undergoing physical processes that we have almost no knowledge of.

‘These planets are so heavily irradiated by their host stars, they’re almost like stars themselves,’ said Deming.

‘This presents an opportunity to observe and understand some very interesting physics.’

WASP-121b has an estimated temperature of 2,500 degrees Celsius (4,600 degrees Fahrenheit). Not a place you’re likely to find sentient life even with the allure of living on a planet shaped like an egg.





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