The discovery of a massive extrasolar planet in Centauri b could revolutionize the hypotheses of planet formation. The Centaurus binary system is 325 light-years from Earth. The planet called Centauri b is 11 times heavier than Jupiter, which is unprecedented in its kind.
This planet, along with two other stars in the centrifugal system, is ten times heavier than our Sun. Thus, this system is the heaviest star system in which a planet has been discovered. Also, the Centaurus star is the hottest host star system ever known.
Marcus Johnson“Discovering the planet around a centrifugal star is very exciting; “Because it can change the landscape of the host star’s massive mass stars.”
Hot mass star system
The two Centaurus stars are nearly 15 million years old, and both are younger than our 4.5-billion-year-old Sun. The comet’s mass did not appear to be suitable for hosting planets; However, the heaviest binary system hosting the planet has a mass of 2.7 solar masses, and the heaviest single star with worlds in orbit is three times heavier than the sun.
The heat and power of the centrifugal system reinforces the hypothesis of a bad host. The main star, b Centuari A, A star of the type B with an estimated temperature of 18,000 degrees Celsius. This temperature is three times hotter than a G-type star like the Sun and hotter than other host stars on the planet.
B Centauri b emits high-energy X-rays and ultraviolet rays that can scatter the gas and dust needed to form planets. “Type B stars are one of the most dangerous and destructive environments,” says Johnson. “It used to be very difficult to form a planet around these stars.”
This image, captured with the SPHERE instrument and the very large Telescope of the Southern European Observatory in Chile, shows the heaviest star pair of the planet, Centauri b, and its giant planet, Centauri b.
Overcoming obstacles
The new planet broke many of the previous obstacles and hypotheses. Johnson and his colleagues discovered the planet Centauri B using the SPHERE instrument (a high-contrast extrasolar planet research instrument) mounted on the giant Southern European Observatory (ESO) telescope in Chile. SPHERE captured a direct image of b cen b.
Analysis of SPHERE observations allows researchers to study other features of the planet that go far beyond the massive size of the planet and the intense heat of the host stars. Bicenterus, for example, is 550 astronomical units away from the binary star, which is 14 times farther away from Pluto’s average distance from the Sun. It is worth mentioning that each astronomical unit is equal to the distance from the earth to the sun or about 150 million kilometers.
The researchers’ article was published December 8 in the journal Nature. According to the authors, the planet Cen b is one of the widest known planetary orbits. This distance could justify the planet’s survival; Because it is safe from the harmful rays of the Centaurus system b.
The origin of the planet B Cen b is unknown, and it may have originally formed at a relatively close distance from the binary star by the nucleus accretion method. This model is the most common planet-forming process in which the gas and dust of planetary disks are placed next to each other to form rock-forming blocks, and the joint gravity of these components together forms the planets. The young world then reaches its current position due to gravitational reactions.
Also, the planet b cen b may have been born in its current position. This hypothesis is called gravitational instability. Kathleen Crater “The University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory says:
In this top-down model, the mass of the planetary disk must be large enough to cause it to collapse internally under its own gravity. In this case, a small secondary body is created and begins to rotate around the star.
The mechanism of gravitational instability is also suitable for the formation of very large objects; But the planet is small in size compared to its host stars; For this reason, the theory of gravitational instability will be less possible.
It may be similar to Jupiter, which was transported to a distant point in the system by reacting with stars in the system. By looking more closely at the planets associated with large stars, the exact mechanism of formation can be understood.
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