Scientists have found a giant planet orbiting at such a close distance from its home star that according to all available ideas it would have been destroyed long ago.
The results of the study can be found at arXiv.org. The planet K2-39b was identified, which is 50 times more massive than our Earth, and its radius is eight times greater than Earth. The object was first recorded during the Kepler K2 mission. Researchers have now tried to confirm the planetary status of the object using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) spectrograph.
Scientists have found that a year on K2-39b lasts only 4.6 Earth days. Thus, this exoplanet is the closest planet to a subgiant star of all known to science. The object is located at such a close distance from its star that, according to the available ideas, it should have been destroyed long ago by tidal forces. Such forces arise in bodies that move freely in a non-uniform force field.
In any case, the lifetime of an exoplanet is very limited. Researchers now believe that K2-39b will be destroyed by its parent star in 150 million years.
