HD 131399Ab THIS COULD BE THE STRANGEST EXOPLANET FOUND YET

GIANT PLANET ORBITS THREE STARS AT ONCE

Imagine a planet, like Jupiter, but four times heavier. And it's got a huge orbit, maybe twice as wide as Pluto's. Oh, and it has three suns. That planet is real, and it's only 320 light years away. Meet HD 131399Ab.

A team of researchers found this strange planet using the Very Large Telescope run by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in the Atacama Desert in Chile, while looking for exoplanets around 100 young stars. The planet isn't the biggest exoplanet, nor is it the first found in a three-star system, and the so-called Scorpion Planet Survey isn't finished, so the researchers don't know whether they'll find other planets just like HD 131399Ab. But they think the combination of the planet's size and location among its three suns still make it especially strange to us earthlings.

"This is crazier than anything our dynamicist" -- the person who calculates how planets move -- "knows about," the study's first author and University of Arizona graduate student Kevin Wagner told Popular Science.


The three stars in the system are HD 131399A (which I'll call Sun A from now on), HD 131399B (Sun B) and HD 131399C (Sun C). The team won't know how the planet fits into the whole system until they make more observations, but has a few ideas. HD 131399Ab might orbit Sun A, which spins like a mobile in tandem with Sun B and C, which orbit tightly around each other. The team published their findings today in the journal Science.

From ESO: "This graphic shows the orbit of the planet in the HD 131399 system (red line) and the orbits of the stars (blue lines). The planet orbits the brightest star in the system, HD 131399A."

What makes HD 131399Ab unique is how far away the team found it from Sun A. The planet sits right on the border of the furthest possible place it could be without being flung into space by the gravity from Suns B and C, like a rubber band pulled as tight as possible right before snapping. "That the planet is so far away from the primary star (Sun A) and so close to the other stars (Suns B and C) is really surprising," said Wagner. "We don’t think the planet formed where we see it today. It’s not impossible but ... what’s more likely is it formed elsewhere, closer to [Sun A] or [Suns B and C], and then, through some scattering event, migrated to its current location"

The planet is also among the first batch of exoplanets discovered with direct imaging. Usually, astronomers just look at stars for a while and wait for the exoplanet to pass in front, like a distant eclipse. Direct imaging finds planets by detecting the heat the planets themselves give off instead. The thing is, direct imaging can only see big, hot planets far from their host star, since the filtering used to get rid of all the non-planet light might also filter out smaller closer planets, and colder planets won't emit enough infrared light. Even at four times Jupiter's mass, HD 131399Ab is still one of the lightest planets found with direct imaging.

From ESO: "This chart shows the location of the triple star HD 131399 in the large southern constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur). This star, whose brightest component is orbited by the unique planet HD 131399Ab, is too faint to be seen with the unaided eye, but can be found in binoculars. Its location is marked on this chart with a red circle."

Others agreed HD 131399Ab was a very interesting planet, but weren't surprised by its observation. "The more extreme crazy things are the biggest, brightest, closest to something else or furthest from something else," Alexander Mustill who models exoplanets and wasn't involved with the study told Popular Science. "Those are the ones you see first."


Mustill and Wagner both hope the direct imaging survey will give them more insight into how planets are formed in other star systems. We aren't so sure just how common hot, young and distant planets like HD 131399Ab are. "If these massive distant planet formations are very common then we’ll need a [theoretical] model that forms these things easily and often," said Mustill. "But if they only find one planet like this, then it becomes some kind of weird outlier that isn’t representative of how most other planetary systems form."




The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Popular Science. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.â

Chaotic Orbit Of Halley's Comet Explained

In the wonderful world of astronomy, you can have perfectly regular events that happen in quite a chaotic way. And Halley’s Comet is one these happenings.

The most famous comet of all returns to our skies every 75 years, but its orbit is so strongly influenced by other bodies in the Solar System that, until now, astronomers couldn't predict its trajectory.

A team of Dutch and Scottish researchers has shown that the comet keeps the same orbit for about 300 years before slowly shifting, which contrasts with the traditional view that the comet has perturbations every 70 years.

"We did the most accurate calculations of Halley and the planets ever," said researcher Tjarda Boekholt from Leiden University in a statement. "To our surprise, Halley's orbit was most strongly influenced by the planet Venus and not by Jupiter, the planet that was always pointed to as the biggest spoiler."

According to the study, accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Venus won’t always be the major player. In about 3,000 years, Halley’s comet will have a close encounter with Jupiter, which will give it a jolt and take back the role of the main perturber of the comet.




"After that, predictions of the orbit become less accurate, because the precise effect of Jupiter's gravity introduces a relatively large error in our calculations," added fellow researcher Inti Pelupessy.

Halley’s comet has been known of for thousands of years, named after Edmond Halley who first worked out that this comet regularly returned. The oldest surviving record of the comet is a Babylonian tablet from 164 BCE.

The comet was last in our neighborhood in 1986, when it was intercepted by the ESA spacecraft Giotto. This took the first close-up pictures of a comet, reaching 596 kilometers (370 miles) from Halley’s nucleus. No matter its shaky orbit, Halley’s Comet will grace us with its presence again in 2061.

4,000 confirmed exoplanets similar to Earth

If you want to look at the incredible variety of exoplanets, this is your chance.

In the past, visual artists have produced infographics to show in the simplest way possible the ever-increasing number of planets and what we know about them. This latest iteration, called the Exoplanetary Orrery V, was created by Ph.D. student Alan Zucconi from Imperial College London. It presents all confirmed exoplanets with known orbits and temperature until January 2016. The visualizations also include the habitable zones (in green) for the systems based on the luminosity of the host stars.

There are over 4,000 confirmed exoplanets and many more potential candidates waiting for confirmation. An important goal is to find among them a planet similar to Earth. So far, we have found a few “cousins” of our home planet, but a true twin is still elusive. These visualizations show that any claim of a second Earth somewhere else in the Milky Way is still a bit premature.

“Something that I wanted to investigate myself was how close those exoplanets actually were to Earth, and most of them are actually very different,” Zucconi told IFLScience. “I've seen too many articles claiming that a ‘new Earth’ has been discovered... but the truth is that this visualization shows how different these ‘twin’ planets actually are.”

What about : kepler 22b, kepler-438b, kepler-186f, kepler-452b ??  They are all in habitable zone, life on other planets was theoretically discovered, who says it is not so, he lives in another reality or want to mislead.


The Exoplanetary Orrery V reproduces temperatures, stellar types, elliptical orbits, and the habitable zones of the exoplanetary systems. Distance and planetary size are also included, but the scaling is different for simplicity. Planets are considerably smaller than the distances to their stars, so they were made signficantly larger.

The Orrery is based on data from the Nasa Exoplanet Archive. As more data becomes available, the Orrery will be corrected.

“I got the data last month, but I keep on updating it,” said Zucconi. “So, I’ve only included all confirmed exoplanets for which the data plotted was there. Although not all the exoplanets have known eccentricity, so in those cases I plotted [the orbit] as a circle.”

You can check out the full scope of infographics at Zucconi's website.


Solar sytem with earth

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by iflscience. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Knowledge is power.

The universe: Reading the future from the distant past

Cosmic Calendar - Wikipedia

Scientists work at SLAC and Stanford are combining experimental data and theory to understand how the universe formed and what its future holds. Here, clumps and filaments of dark matter (black areas) serve as the scaffolding for the formation of cosmic structures made of regular matter (bright areas), including stars, galaxies and galaxy clusters.

The Dark Energy Survey World Scientific

These are the fundamental questions "astrophysical archeologists" like Risa Wechsler want to answer. At the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) of Stanford and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, her team combines experimental data with theory in computer simulations that dig deeply into cosmic history and trace back how matter particles clumped together to form larger and larger structures in the expanding universe.

"Most of our calculations are done at KIPAC, and computing is a crucial aspect of the collaboration between SLAC and Stanford," says Wechsler, who is an associate professor of physics and of particle physics and astrophysics.

Wechsler's simulated journeys through spacetime use a variety of experimental data, including observations by the Dark Energy Survey (DES), which recently discovered a new set of ultra-faint companion galaxies of our Milky Way that are rich in what is known as dark matter. The gravitational pull from this invisible form of matter affects regular matter, which plays a crucial role in the formation and growth of galaxies.

Dark energy is another key ingredient shaping the universe: It inflates the universe like a balloon at an ever-increasing rate, but researchers don't know much about what causes the acceleration.


Two future projects will give Wechsler and other researchers new clues about the mysterious energy. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), whose science collaboration she is leading, will begin in 2018 to turn two-dimensional images of surveys like DES into a three-dimensional map of the universe. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), whose ultrasensitive 3,200-megapixel digital eye is being assembled at SLAC, will start a few years later to explore space more deeply than any telescope before.

"Looking at faraway galaxies means looking into the past and allows us to measure how the growth and distribution of galaxies were affected by dark energy at different points in time," Wechsler says. "Over the past 10 years, we've made a lot of progress in refining our cosmological model, which describes many of the properties of today's universe very well. Yet, if future data caused this model to break down, it would completely change our view of the universe."

The current model suggests that the universe is fated to expand forever, turning into a darker and darker cosmos faster and faster, with galaxies growing farther and farther apart. But is this acceleration a constant or changing property of spacetime? Or could it possibly be a breakdown of our theory of gravity on the largest scales? More data will help researchers find an answer to these fundamental questions.

Other articles on the same theme:

What form does the atomic nucleus? New discovery may explain the mysteries of the Universe.

A new theory on the Creation of the Universe, disprove the Big Bang

The First Stars in the Universe could provide clues about Dark Matter

NOBEL PHYSICS 2016. Nobel Prize winners are David DJ. Thouless, F. M. Duncan Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz

Story Source:

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The original item was written by Manuel Gnida. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

NASA's Space Launch System Booster Passes Major Milestone on Journey to Mars

A booster for the most powerful rocket in the world, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), successfully fired up Tuesday for its second qualification ground test at Orbital ATK's test facilities in Promontory, Utah. This was the last full-scale test for the booster before SLS’s first uncrewed test flight with NASA’s Orion spacecraft in late 2018, a key milestone on the agency’s Journey to Mars.

“This final qualification test of the booster system shows real progress in the development of the Space Launch System,” said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Seeing this test today, and experiencing the sound and feel of approximately 3.6 million pounds of thrust, helps us appreciate the progress we’re making to advance human exploration and open new frontiers for science and technology missions in deep space.”

The booster was tested at a cold motor conditioning target of 40 degrees Fahrenheit –the colder end of its accepted propellant temperature range. When ignited, temperatures inside the booster reached nearly 6,000 degrees. The two-minute, full-duration ground qualification test provided NASA with critical data on 82 qualification objectives that will support certification of the booster for flight. Engineers now will evaluate these data, captured by more than 530 instrumentation channels on the booster.

When completed, two five-segment boosters and four RS-25 main engines will power SLS on deep space missions. The solid rocket boosters, built by NASA contractor Orbital ATK, operate in parallel with SLS’s main engines for the first two minutes of flight. They will provide more than 75 percent of the thrust needed for the rocket and Orion spacecraft to escape Earth’s gravitational pull.

"Today's test is the pinnacle of years of hard work by the NASA team, Orbital ATK and commercial partners across the country," said John Honeycutt, SLS Program manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “SLS hardware is currently in production for every part of the rocket. NASA also is making progress every day on Orion and the ground systems to support a launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. We're on track to launch SLS on its first flight test with Orion and pave the way for a human presence in deep space."

The first full-scale booster qualification ground test was successfully completed in March 2015 and demonstrated acceptable performance of the booster design at 90 degrees Fahrenheit – the highest end of the booster’s accepted propellant temperature range. Testing at the thermal extremes experienced by the booster on the launch pad is important to understand the effect of temperature on how the propellant burns.

The initial SLS configuration will have a minimum 70-metric-ton (77-ton) lift capability. The next planned upgrade of SLS will use a powerful exploration upper stage for more ambitious missions, with a 105-metric-ton (115-ton) lift capacity. In each configuration, SLS will continue to use the same core stage and four RS-25 engines.

For more information about NASA’s Journey to Mars, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/journeytomars

For more information on SLS, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/sls

Source: NASA

Possible Alien Ocean beneath Saturn's moon Enceladus's icy surface

Updated 05/05/2020

Enceladus is the sixth-largest moon of Saturn. It is about 500 kilometers (310 mi) in diameter, about a tenth of that of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Enceladus is mostly covered by fresh, clean ice, making it one of the most reflective bodies of the Solar System.

NASA Advances Instrument to Study Enceladus NASA

Consequently, its surface temperature at noon only reaches −198 °C (−324 °F), far colder than a light-absorbing body would be. Despite its small size, Enceladus has a wide range of surface features, ranging from old, heavily cratered regions to young, tectonically deformed terrains. wikipedia
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With eruptions of ice and water vapor, and an ocean covered by an ice shell, Saturn's moon Enceladus is one of the most fascinating in the Solar System, especially as interpretations of data provided by the Cassini spacecraft have been contradictory until now. An international team including researchers from the Laboratoire de Planétologie Géodynamique de Nantes (CNRS/Université de Nantes/Université d'Angers), Charles University in Prague, and the Royal Observatory of Belgium[1] recently proposed a new model that reconciles different data sets and shows that the ice shell at Enceladus's south pole may be only a few kilometers thick. This suggests that there is a strong heat source in the interior of Enceladus, an additional factor supporting the possible emergence of life in its ocean.

The study has just been published online on the website of Geophysical Research Letters.

Initial interpretations of data from Cassini flybys of Enceladus estimated that the thickness of its ice shell ranged from 30 to 40 km at the south pole to 60 km at the equator. These models were unable to settle the question of whether or not its ocean extended beneath the entire ice shell. However, the discovery in 2015 of an oscillation in Enceladus's rotation known as a libration, which is linked to tidal effects, suggests that it has a global ocean and a much thinner ice shell than predicted, with a mean thickness of around 20 km. Nonetheless, this thickness appeared to be inconsistent with other gravity and topography data.

In order to reconcile the different constraints, the researchers propose a new model in which the top two hundred meters of the ice shell acts like an elastic shell. According to this study, Enceladus is made up successively of a rocky core with a radius of 185 km, and an internal ocean approximately 45 km deep, isolated from the surface by an ice shell with a mean thickness of around 20 km, except at the south pole where it is thought to be less than 5 km thick. In this model, the ocean beneath the ice makes up 40% of the total volume of the moon, while its salt content is estimated to be similar to that of Earth's oceans.

All this implies a new energy budget for Enceladus. Since a thinner ice shell retains less heat, the tidal effects caused by Saturn on the large fractures in the ice at the south pole are no longer enough to explain the strong heat flow affecting this region. The model therefore reinforces the idea that there is strong heat production in Enceladus's deep interior that may power the hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor. Since complex organic molecules, whose precise composition remains unknown, have been detected in Enceladus's jets, these conditions appear to be favorable to the emergence of life. The relative thinness of the ice shell at the south pole could also allow a future space exploration mission to gather data, in particular using radar, which would be far more reliable and easy to obtain than with the 40 km thick ice shell initially calculated. It looks as if Enceladus still has many secrets in store.

source: sciencedaily

The US is close to approving the first ever private Moon mission for 2017.

The US government is set to give approval to California-based space company, Moon Express, to explore the surface of the Moon over a two-week period in 2017.

Moon Express has applied to have its MX-1 lander launch to the Moon next year, land on the surface, and conduct a series of analyses that will help prepare the company for potentially carrying payloads to the Moon in the future. If approved, this would be the first time a private enterprise - not a nation - has launched a mission beyond Earth’s orbit.

So what is this MX-1 lander that could potentially take private enterprise beyond Earth’s orbit for the first time ever?

The precedent that this could set would be huge, potentially opening up space exploration to anyone in the world who has the funds and the expertise, e.g. SpaceX, which just recently announced plans to get to Mars by 2018.

"Moon Express, I think, is paving the way for commercial activity outside of Earth orbit," Mariel Borowitz from the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who is not involved with the company, told the Los Angeles Times.

Reports of the approval are coming from an investigation by Andy Pasztor from The Wall Street Journal, who announced today that the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) - which is responsible for approving all commercial rocket launches - is mulling over the terms.

It could take weeks or even months before the decision is made public, but representatives from Moon Express told Pasztor that they could not elaborate on the "groundbreaking developments", but they were "very optimistic" about the proposal.

The FAA itself disclosed that it is still ironing out the approval process, but it’s working to ensure that a "mechanism is in place that permits emerging commercial space operations, such as the one that Moon Express has publicly commented on".

That sounds pretty promising to us!

Set to launch 2017 on Los Angeles-based company Rocket Lab’s brand new Electron rocket, the MX-1 lander is powered by sunlight and hydrogen peroxide rocket fuel. Because this is essentially just an oxygen enriched water compound, Moon Express is looking into how they could use water on the Moon to supply MX-1 with fuel on its journey back home.

The coffee table-sized lander is equipped with everything it needs to drill into the surface of the Moon, collect samples, and fly them back home for analysis. Moon Express co-founder Bob Richards calls the MX-1 the 'iPhone of space'.

Of particular interest to Moon Express are platinum group metals, rare earth elements, and Helium-3, the latter which could be a safer nuclear fuel alternative, says Samantha Masunaga at the Los Angeles Times.

If the proposal is approved, Moon Express will likely be free to investigate the potential of 'Moon mining', but will still have to adhere to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which stipulates that weapons cannot be tested anywhere beyond Earth’s orbit, and forbids "anyone from sending a mission, robot or human, close to a water source in the fear of contaminating it with life from Earth".

This means if Moon Express plans on using the water ice on the Moon for fuel or other purposes, they’re going to have to be very, very careful about it.

Approvals and treaties aside, we are very excited about where this could take space exploration over the next decade and beyond. Unlike many private companies, Moon Express has the funds to actually get this done, and it could change everything if they do. And just think about it - we're talking 2017, that's next year!

"These are pioneers," Marco Caceres, senior space analyst at the Teal Group, an aerospace and defence analysis company, told the Los Angeles Times. "It might jump-start an industry. It may do nothing because it’s so hard that only that company can do it. It really just takes that first company to be successful."

source: sciencealert

NASA's Juno spacecraft is almost at Jupiter Prepare for awesome pictures!

On 4 July, NASA’s basketball court-sized Juno spacecraft will finally arrive at Jupiter, completing its approximate 600 million-kilometre (372 million-mile) trip through the Solar System.

While there, Juno hopes to perform 37 close approaches, collecting valuable data for researchers back here on Earth. If all goes well, Juno will explore the gas giant closer than any other spacecraft in history, including 1974’s Pioneer 11.

"At this time last year our New Horizons spacecraft was closing in for humanity’s first close views of Pluto," said Juno’s program executive Diane Brown. "Now, Juno is poised to go closer to Jupiter than any spacecraft ever before to unlock the mysteries of what lies within."

The mission will not be easy, though. To perform the necessary experiments, Juno will have to fly inside Jupiter’s atmosphere, a place that's pretty intense.

Here, Juno will experience immense pressures from the planet’s quick rotation – a day on Jupiter is only 10 hours long – which creates a powerful magnetic field, coupled with extremely high levels of radiation and atmospheric pressure. In fact, NASA says that Jupiter’s radiation-filled environment is the harshest in the Solar System.

"Over the life of the mission, Juno will be exposed to the equivalent of over 100 million dental X-rays," said Juno’s project manager Rick Nybakken.

NASA's Juno spacecraft finds deep winds and patterned cyclones on Jupiter photo: The Verge

"But, we are ready. We designed an orbit around Jupiter that minimises exposure to Jupiter’s harsh radiation environment. This orbit allows us to survive long enough to obtain the tantalising science data that we have travelled so far to get."

The good news is Juno is armoured like a knight prepared for cosmic battle from its wires to its sensors. But the most important piece of protection is its 'titanium vault', which houses its central computer.

This titanium vault weighs roughly 181 kilograms (400 pounds) and will reduce the amount of radiation felt by the instruments inside by 800 times that of the surrounding environment. Even so, that amount of radiation will still take its toll, allowing for the craft to only operate for roughly 20 months before it gets overwhelmed.

"Over the course of the mission, the highest energy electrons will penetrate the vault, creating a spray of secondary photons and particles," said team leader Heidi Becker, who is responsible for monitoring radiation levels during the mission. "The constant bombardment will break the atomic bonds in Juno’s electronics."

Originally launched on 5 August 2011, Juno is set to become the first spacecraft to ever pull off such a detailed mission to the gas giant - but the first craft to reach Jupiter was Pioneer 10 back in 1973, which provided the first close-up images of the planet.

Pioneer 10 was followed a year later by Pioneer 11, which flew within 34,000 kilometres (21,127 miles) of Jupiter’s clouds. Juno, on the other hand, will fly only 4,667 kilometres (2,900 miles) above the clouds.

Juno’s arrival at Jupiter couldn’t come at a better time, either. Earlier this month, researchers working with the Very Large Array – a radio telescope in New Mexico – were able to examine what is behind Jupiter’s famed clouds. Now, Juno has a chance to verify some of these findings up close.

Over the coming months, we should start to see the results of the mission pour in just like we did last year when New Horizons performed its Pluto flybys, capturing the world’s imaginations in the process.

               But, if you’re still not pumped for the mission, check out NASA’s trailer for it below

Source: sciencealert

NASA's K2 Finds Newborn Exoplanet Around Young Star.

When a planet such as K2-33b passes in front of its host star, it blocks some of the star's light. Observing this periodic dimming, called a transit, from continual monitoring of a star's brightness, allows astronomers to detect planets outside our solar system with a high degree of certainty. This Neptune-sized planet orbits a star that is between 5 and 10 million years old. In addition to the planet, the star hosts a disk of planetary debris, seen as a bright ring encircling the star.

K2-33b, shown in this illustration, is one of the youngest exoplanets detected to date. It makes a complete orbit around its star in about five days.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This image shows the K2-33 system, and its planet K2-33b, compared to our own solar system. The planet has a five-day orbit, whereas Mercury orbits our sun in 88 days. The planet is also nearly 10 times closer to its star than Mercury is to the sun.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Astronomers have discovered the youngest fully formed exoplanet ever detected. The discovery was made using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope and its extended K2 mission, as well as the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Exoplanets are planets that orbit stars beyond our sun.

The newfound planet, K2-33b, is a bit larger than Neptune and whips tightly around its star every five days. It is only 5 to 10 million years old, making it one of a very few newborn planets found to date.

"Our Earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old," said Trevor David of Caltech in Pasadena, lead author of a new study published online June 20, 2016, in the journal Nature. "By comparison, the planet K2-33b is very young. You might think of it as an infant." David is a graduate student working with astronomer Lynne Hillenbrand, also of Caltech.

Planet formation is a complex and tumultuous process that remains shrouded in mystery. Astronomers have discovered and confirmed roughly 3,000 exoplanets so far; however, nearly all of them are hosted by middle-aged stars, with ages of a billion years or more. For astronomers, attempting to understand the life cycles of planetary systems using existing examples is like trying to learn how people grow from babies to children to teenagers, by only studying adults.

"The newborn planet will help us better understand how planets form, which is important for understanding the processes that led to the formation of Earth," said co-author Erik Petigura of Caltech.

The first signals of the planet's existence were measured by K2. The telescope's camera detected a periodic dimming of the light emitted by the planet's host star, a sign that an orbiting planet could be regularly passing in front of the star and blocking the light. Data from the Keck Observatory validated that the dimming was indeed caused by a planet, and also helped confirm its youthful age.

Infrared measurements from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope showed that the system's star is surrounded by a thin disk of planetary debris, indicating that its planet-formation phase is wrapping up. Planets form out of thick disks of gas and dust, called protoplanetary disks, that surround young stars.

"Initially, this material may obscure any forming planets, but after a few million years, the dust starts to dissipate," said co-author Anne Marie Cody, a NASA Postdoctoral Program fellow at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. "It is during this time window that we can begin to detect the signatures of youthful planets with K2." 

A surprising feature in the discovery of K2-33b is how close the newborn planet lies to its star. The planet is nearly 10 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our sun, making it hot. While numerous older exoplanets have been found orbiting very tightly to their stars, astronomers have long struggled to understand how more massive planets like this one wind up in such small orbits. Some theories propose that it takes hundreds of millions of years to bring a planet from a more distant orbit into a close one -- and therefore cannot explain K2-33b, which is quite a bit younger.

The science team says there are two main theories that may explain how K2-33b wound up so close to its star. It could have migrated there in a process called disk migration that takes hundreds of thousands of years. Or, the planet could have formed "in situ" -- right where it is. The discovery of K2-33b therefore gives theorists a new data point to ponder.

"After the first discoveries of massive exoplanets on close orbits about 20 years ago, it was immediately suggested that they could absolutely not have formed there, but in the past several years, some momentum has grown for in situ formation theories, so the idea is not as wild as it once seemed," said David.

"The question we are answering is: Did those planets take a long time to get into those hot orbits, or could they have been there from a very early stage? We are saying, at least in this one case, that they can indeed be there at a very early stage," he said.

Ames manages the Kepler and K2 missions for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation operates the flight system with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Source : NASA