Discovery challenges current planetary formation theories
5/6/2025 6:12
Astronomers have spotted
a cosmic mismatch that has left them perplexed - a really big
planet orbiting a really small star. The discovery defies
current understanding of how planets form.
The star is only about a fifth the mass of the sun. Stars
this size should host small planets akin to Earth and Mars under
the leading theories on planetary formation. But the one
detected in orbit around this star is much larger - in fact, as
big as Saturn, the second-largest planet in our solar system.
The star, named TOI-6894, is located roughly 240 light-years
from Earth in the constellation Leo. A light-year is the
distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5
trillion km). It is the smallest-known star to host a large
planet, about 40% smaller than the two previous record holders.
"The question of how such a small star can host such a large
planet is one that this discovery raises - and we are yet to
answer," said astronomer Edward Bryant of the University of
Warwick in England, lead author of the study published on
Wednesday in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Planets beyond our solar system are called exoplanets. The
one orbiting TOI-6894 is a gas giant, like Saturn and Jupiter in
our solar system, rather than a rocky planet like Earth.
The birth of a planetary system begins with a large cloud of
gas and dust - called a molecular cloud - that collapses under
its own gravity to form a central star. Leftover material
spinning around the star in what is called a protoplanetary disk
forms planets. Smaller clouds yield smaller stars, and smaller
disks contain less material to form planets.
"In small clouds of dust and gas, it's hard to build a giant
planet," said exoplanet scientist and study co-author Vincent
Van Eylen of University College London's Mullard Space Science
Laboratory.
"This is because to build a giant planet, you need to
quickly build a large planet core and then quickly accrete
(accumulate) a lot of gas on top of that core. But there's only
so much time to do it before the star starts shining and the
disk rapidly disappears. In small stars, we think there's simply
not enough mass available to build a giant planet quickly enough
before the disk disappears," Van Eylen added.
No known planet is larger than its host star, and that is
the case here as well, though the two are much closer in size
than usual. While the sun's diameter is 10 times larger than our
solar system's largest planet Jupiter, TOI-6894's diameter is
just 2.5 times greater than its only known planet.
The star is a red dwarf, the smallest type of regular star
and the most common kind found in the Milky Way galaxy.
"Given these stars are very common, there may be many more
giant planets in the galaxy than we thought," Bryant said.
The star is about 21% the mass of the sun and much dimmer.
In fact, the sun is about 250 times more luminous than TOI-6894.
"These findings suggest that even the smallest stars in the
universe can in some cases form very large planets. That forces
us to rethink some of our planet formation models," Van Eylen
said.
The planet is located about 40 times closer to its star than
Earth is to the sun, completing an orbit in approximately three
days. Its proximity to the star means the planet's surface is
quite hot, though not as hot as gas giants called "hot Jupiters"
detected orbiting similarly close to bigger stars.
Its diameter is slightly larger than Saturn and a bit
smaller than Jupiter, though it is less dense than them. Its
mass is 56% that of Saturn and 17% that of Jupiter.
The main data used in studying the planet came from NASA's
orbiting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, and the
European Southern Observatory's Chile-based Very Large
Telescope, or VLT.
The researchers hope to better understand the planet's
composition with observations planned over the next year using
the James Webb Space Telescope.
"We expect it to have a massive core surrounded by a gaseous
envelope made up of predominantly hydrogen and helium gas,"
Bryant said.
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