Scientists have discovered a ‘Super Earth’ that is believed to orbit one of the oldest stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The exoplanet gets its title because it is suspected to be about three times the mass of the Earth, with a size 50% larger than our home planet.
The planet, called TOI-561b, was described in a new study accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. Despite the mass of the planet, the density is about the same as the density of the Earth, astronomers found in the study.
“We report the discovery of TOI-561, a multi-planet system in the galactic thick disk containing an ultra-short-lived, time-lapse rocket (USP) planet,” the study states.
The planet gets its name from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission in 2018. The “TOI” in TOI-561b stands for TESS Subject of Interest. It is located outside the solar system, in the thick galactic disk of the Milky Way, according to a report by CNN. Due to its proximity to the host star, it only takes less than half a day for Earth to complete one orbit around it.
“For every day you are on Earth, this planet revolves around the star twice,” Stephen Kane, co-author of a study and astronaut at the University of California, Riverside, said in a statement. The researchers determined the size, radius and density of the planet using the WM Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
(Representative image: Reuters)
This dense level of the ‘super-Earth’ means that the average surface temperature on the planet is above 2,000 Kelvin, or 3,140 degrees Fahrenheit. TOI-561b is, therefore, too hot to live in. Although astronomers know that the rocky planet and its star are a 10 billion year old system, they wonder if the planet ever wreaked havoc in the past. .
“TOI-561b is one of the oldest rocky planets yet to be discovered,” study lead author Lauren Weiss said in a statement. “Being there shows that the universe has been forming rocky planets almost since it began 14 billion years ago.” By comparison, our sun is only 4.5 billion years old. age.
It is discovered that these ancient planets are not as dense as the recently created planets. This is because so many heavy elements were not present in the universe at the time. These elements were eventually created by stars that finally met in a supernova.
The study highlights two other planets orbiting the star, which are both gaseous and larger than TOI-561b.