(ORDO NEWS) — An international team of astronomers has discovered an unusual star system in which a gas giant orbiting a low-mass red dwarf is only four times smaller than it in mass.
Smaller and cooler than the Sun, red dwarfs are the most common stars in our galaxy. Their light is rather dim, but life expectancy is huge – from tens of billions to tens of trillions of years.
Scientists have already found exoplanets in systems of low-mass red dwarfs, but they have never come across a gas giant: it was believed that the features of the formation of these stars are not suitable for the formation of massive stone cores of gas planets, therefore only rocky planets similar to Mars can circulate in such systems or Venus.
However, the discovery of a gas giant in the red dwarf system TOI-5205 destroyed the established ideas: the planet TOI-5205b is only four times smaller than the star it orbits, and if the sizes of Jupiter and the Sun can be compared with a pea and a grapefruit, then TOI-5205b and TOI- 5205 is a pea and a small lemon.
About the size of Jupiter, TOI-5205b blocks nearly seven percent of its light as it passes the star’s disk, far more than any other known exoplanet in the universe.
Its existence does not fit into any model for the formation of gas giants: it is a “forbidden” planet that should not exist, based on our understanding of the evolution of stellar systems.
In the future, the researchers plan to continue studying the TOI-5205 system, hoping to understand the features of its formation that allowed the gas giant to form.
After all, this is how science exists: constantly refuting old theories, scientists are looking for new data that will allow them to correct or even completely rewrite the picture of the world.
—
Online:
Contact us: [email protected]
Our Standards, Terms of Use: Standard Terms And Conditions.