Astronomers Find Puzzling Planet That ‘Shouldn’t Exist’ Orbiting Red Giant Star
© W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam MakarenkoA possible violent merger between two stars could have formed the helium-burning giant star Baekdu, enabling the planet's unlikely survival around the star.© W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam MakarenkoSubscribeInternationalIndiaAfricaFantine GardinierAll materialsOrbiting the red giant star Baekdu about 520 light-years from Earth is a Jupiter-sized planet called Halla. However, there’s something extremely unusual about Halla: it shouldn’t exist anymore, according to all-known scientific reasoning.While at the present, Halla orbits about 0.49 astronomical units (AU) away from its host star, or about half the distance from the Earth to our sun, that wasn’t always the case. Baekdu is a red giant in the late stages of its life, having already shrunk back from a period in which it had ballooned outward to many times its present diameter.According to the work of a group of astronomers based at the University of Sydney in Australia, and published on Wednesday
"Engulfment by a star normally has catastrophic consequences for close orbiting planets," study co-author Daniel Huber, an astronomer and research fellow at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy, said in a statement. "When we realized that Halla had managed to survive in the immediate vicinity of its giant star, it was a complete surprise."
"The system was more likely similar to the famous fictional planet Tatooine from 'Star Wars,' which orbits two suns," said study co-author Tim Bedding, an astronomy professor at the University of Sydney.
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