A NEW Earth-sized planet has been discovered in a faraway constellation – and it would kill any astronaut who dare travel there.
Some 117.4 light-years away from Earth, scientists have stumbled across a nightmarish alien world where the planet’s surface is likely molten.
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The planet, dubbed TOI-2431, orbits quite close to its nearest star over a very short period, resulting in a high surface temperature.
Unlike Earth, which has an orbital period of 365 days, TOI-2431 orbits its star in only 5.4 hours – making it one of the shortest period exoplanets ever discovered.
The alien world, located in constellation Cetus, is thought to have a surface temperature of about 1,700C (3092F).
Anything that lands there would be immediately incinerated.
The international team of astronomers, led by Kaya Han Taş of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, detected the new exoplanet orbiting a nearby star using Nasa’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).
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“We have confirmed the ultra-short period planet TOI-2431 b using a combination of photometric transit data from TESS, precise radial velocity observations with the NEID and HPF spectrographs, and ground-based speckle imaging with the NESSI instrument,” researchers wrote in the new research paper.
The Nasa tool monitors about 200,000 bright stars near Earth, scanning for hidden planets that might cause any blips of light as they pass their star.
Just last week, researchers revealed they used TESS to follow a repetitive flicker of starlight to a new ‘Super Earth’ 154 light-years away.
Since its launch in April 2018, the satellite has identified more than 7,600 possible exoplanets – which are nicknamed TESS Objects of Interest, or TOI.
Exactly 638 of these have been confirmed as alien worlds so far.
The planet’s host star is only about two-thirds the size and mass of our Sun, and appears to be pulling the planet towards a fiery death.
Researchers estimated that the planet has a tidal decay timescale of about 31 million years – which is fairly short in the grand schemes of the universe.
Tidal decay causes a planet’s orbit to gradually shrink and spiral towards its host star – eventually leading to its destruction.
The 2billion-year-old host star, which researchers believe is roughly double the temperature of its nearby planet, will eventually collide with the planet.
Researchers hope they can secure time with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to study TOI-2431 b more closely.
Doing so could shed more light on the planet’s surface composition, and may answer the question of whether or not it has an atmosphere.
The $10 billion telescope discovered its first-ever exoplanet just last month, but has been used to analyse others on its journey through space.
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All you need to know about planets in our solar system
Our solar system is made up of nine planets with Earth the third closest to the Sun. But each planet has its own quirks, so find out more about them all…
- How old is Earth? Plus other facts on our planet
- How many moons does Mercury have?
- What colour is Venus?
- How far away is Mars to Earth? And other facts on the red planet
- How big is Jupiter?
- How many moons does Saturn have?
- Does Uranus have rings?
- How many moons does Neptune have?
- How big is Pluto?
- How hot is the Sun?
