A massive exoplanet discovered to orbit a binary star 336 light-years away could provide clues to a mystery close to home.
In the distance The Solar System, Beyond Neptune, is a cluster of icy celestial objects known as intense trans-Neptune objects that move in unexpected ways. Some astronomers believe that these objects respond to the gravitational pull of a still unknown planet. Planet Nine, Which revolves Very, very far away. Others think bizarre objects respond to the overall traction of other small objects rather than a large planet.
The Hubble Space Telescope researchers say the new discovery of the exoplanet HD 106906b could help explain how a planet is not ejected to the distant edges of the solar system.
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Mysterious orbit
The planet is 11 times the size of Jupiter and was first discovered in 2013. However, until now, its orbit has been a mystery. This is because the Exoplanet circles are so attractive from the pair of stars at the center of its structure: 730 times the distance between Earth And the sun. At that distance the gravitational pull of the stars is relatively weak, causing the planet to orbit slowly, causing a revolution once every 15,000 years.
Measurements with the Hubble Space Telescope helped researchers classify this snail-slow orbit. They found that the orbit was long and inclined at odd angles. It is outside the dusty disk of debris surrounding the star pair.
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“To highlight why this is so different, we can look at our own solar system and see that all the planets are in the same plane,” said Meiji Nguyen, head of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. Said in a statement. “It would be strange if Jupiter tilted 30 degrees compared to other planets orbiting. This raises all sorts of questions about how the HD 106906b ended up in such a sloping orbit so far.”
Path to Planet Nine
Here is what scientists think may have happened: Exoplanet formed very close to its stars, much closer to the Sun than to the Earth. Over time, the orbit of the traction exoplanet disintegrated, which would have drawn it even closer to its host stars. Instead of bumping into them, it’s complicated Gravity The pair will kick the exoplanet into a new orbit of stars, which will take them into space. Such an orbit may have sent the Exoplanet beyond the gravitational pull of its host stars, expelling it completely from the system. But at the right moment, another star moves closer to the alien system, stabilizing the orbit of the exoplanet and preventing it from being ejected.
If Planet Nine had, something similar might have happened in our own solar system. The imaginary planet could have formed closer to the Sun, being kicked towards the edges of the solar system by Jupiter’s gravitational pull. The passing star could have saved the planet from being completely ejected by Planet Nine by pushing it away from Jupiter and into the inner planets of the solar system. The Kia project, An effort by the European Space Agency to create a three-dimensional map of the galaxy over time that will help identify such possible stellar interactions early in the history of the solar system.
“Just as we have a time machine to go back 4.6 billion years to our own solar system, what could have happened when our young solar system was dynamically active and rearranged around everything,” University researcher Paul Glass of California, Berkeley, said in a statement.
The new Exoplanet gives astronomers a hint of what to look for in a possible Planet Nine. If it is similar to the HD 106906b, it should also have a different inclined orbit. Astronomers also plan to study the HD 106906b itself carefully, trying to figure out how and where it originated.
New discoveries will appear today (Dec. 10) Astronomy Magazine.
First published in Live Science.
