When astronomers first discovered giant planets known as hot Jupiters orbiting close to their stars, they were puzzled. Such planets could not have formed so close to their stars, but an explanation soon emerged: these worlds formed much further away and then moved. But during this process, hot Jupiters must either destroy or eject other planets in the star system. That is, they must remain alone. But the discovery of three planets at once, including hot Jupiter, near the star WASP-132 challenges the theory of the evolution of planetary systems. The study was published in the journal Astronomy \u0026 Astrophysics, writes Space.
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Astronomers have carefully studied the WASP-132 star system, in which a hot Jupiter-type planet called WASP-132b, as previously known, rotates at a very close distance near a star of spectral class K. But it turned out that this planet is not alone, as current models of the formation of such worlds suggest.
In the star system WASP-132, located 403 light-years away, astronomers also discovered a super-Earth planet closer to the star, called WASP-132c, and an icy giant planet, more distant than WASP-132b, called WASP-.
Hot Jupiter, whose mass is slightly less than half the mass of Jupiter, makes a complete revolution around the star in 7 Earth days. A super-Earth with 6 times the mass of Earth does this in 24 Earth hours. And the icy giant planet, whose mass is 5 times greater than the mass of Jupiter, has an orbital period of 5 Earth years.
The mass of hot Jupiter planets is often many times greater than the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system. Moreover, these worlds are very close to their stars. It is believed that such huge planets could not have formed at a very close distance from their stars, and therefore arose much further away and then moved. Current models for the formation of hot Jupiters suggest that as they move, these planets either destroy other worlds in the star system or push them outward, and therefore they must be loners.
But in the WASP-132 star system there are three planets at once, while the super-Earth is even closer to the star than hot Jupiter. Thus, the new discovery proves that other planets can still form near hot Jupiter.
Scientists believe that there is some other way of moving such planets to their stars, which does not lead to the destruction or ejection of neighboring worlds and allows them to form and exist.
But astronomers do not yet know how exactly this process occurs, but they intend to find out with the help of future observations.. Scientists also intend to find out how common such planetary systems are..
According to scientists, this discovery may provoke a revision of ideas about the evolution of hot Jupiters and similar star systems.
As Focus already wrote, Saturn disappeared for some time and the Moon is to blame for this. The Earth's satellite and the second largest planet in the solar system, one might say, played cosmic hide and seek.
Focus also wrote that astronomers received a snapshot of a rare supernova explosion that occurs during the death of unusual stars.