The newly discovered lavafilled planet where years are just 8.5 HOURS long
Imagine waking up every day to a new year
That’s exactly what happens on a Earth-size fireball of a planet 700 light-years away, which orbits its star in just 8.5 hours.
The newly discovered planet, named Kepler 78b, has one of the shortest orbital periods ever detected with a radius that is only about three times the radius of the star. The researchers believe that the planet is about 40 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our sun. Scientists have estimated that the top layer of the planet is likely completely melted, creating a massive, rolling ocean of lava at temperatures at 2760°C.
The star around which Kepler 78b orbits is likely relatively young, as it rotates more than twice as fast as the sun- a sign that the star has not had as much time to slow down.
But what has really excited astronomers is that they were able to detect light emitted by the planet.
This is the first time researchers have been able to do so for an exoplanet as small as Kepler 78b, and it could give scientists detailed information about the planet’s surface composition and reflective properties.
To discover Kepler 78b, the team looked through more than 150,000 stars that were monitored by the Kepler Telescope, a NASA space observatory that surveys a slice of the galaxy.
‘Just the fact that it’s able to survive there implies that it’s very dense,’ said Josh Winn, an associate professor of physics at MIT, and coauthor on both
WHAT HAS REALLY EXCITED ASTRONOMERS IS THAT THEY WERE ABLE TO DETECT LIGHT EMITTED BY THE PLANET
papers.
‘We’ve gotten used to planets having orbits of a few days,’ added Winn. ‘But we wondered, what about a few hours? Is that even possible? And sure enough, there are some out there.’
To find Kepler 78b, the team looked for light dips indicating that a planet may periodically pass in front of a star.
‘I was just looking by eye, and all of a sudden I see this extra drop of light right when it was expected, and it was really beautiful,’ said Sanchis-Ojeda recalls.
‘I thought, we’re actually seeing the light from the planet. It was a really exciting moment.’
While it is about the size of Earth, Kepler 78b is most certainly not habitable, due to its extreme proximity to its host star.
‘You’d have to really stretch your imagination to imagine living on a lava world,’ said Winn says.