Some exoplanets orbit very close to its star, is the case of Hip 67522 B, which is so close that it exerts magnetic influence on its host, which can be the disappearance of the planet.
Astronomers of the European Space Agency (ESA) have detected that the exoplanet seems to trigger flares of radiation from its star, which, in turn, are destroying the faint atmosphere of the planet and causing it to be reduced every year.
This is the first time that a planet is seen that influences its host star, disrupting the previous assumption that they behave independently, said ES in a statement.
It is also the first proof of the existence of a ‘planet wanting to die’, on whose existence theorized in the 1990s had been theorized, but the lights observed are now a few times more energy than expected, indicates an investigation published by Nature.
The star Hip 67522 is slightly larger, colder and much younger than the sun -17 million years against 4.5 billion -and has two planets, the closest, Hip 67522 B, object of this study, takes only seven days to turn around it.
Since the first exoplanet was discovered in the nineties, astronomers have wondered if some could be orbiting close enough to disturb the magnetic fields of their host stars, because if so they could trigger flares.
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The team, headed by Ekaterina Ilin, of the Dutch Radioastronomy Institute (Astron) used the NASA transit surgery satellite (tess), to locate stars that could launch flares for the interaction of their planets and found Hip 67522.
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The researchers resorted to the satellite for the characterization of exoplanets (cheops) of ESA, with which they observed those flares when the planet was traveling ahead of the star viewed from the earth, which made it very likely that they will be caused by the planet itself.
The team deduced that the planet is close enough to exert its own magnetic influence on its host star.
The planet accumulates energy in its orbit and redirects it in the form of waves along the lines of the magnetic field of the star, as if whipping a rope. When the wave reaches the end of the magnetic field line on the surface of the star, it triggers a massive flare.
Hip 67522 B not only causes flares, but does it in its direction, so it experiences six times more radiation than it would receive in other conditions.
That high -energy radiation bombardment is not a good omen for Hip 67522 B, which has a size similar to Jupiter’s, but its density is that of “a cotton of sugar”, which makes it one of the most thin exoplanets ever found, the ESA added.
Over time, radiation is eroding the planet’s atmosphere, which means that it is losing much faster mass than expected and in the next hundred million years, it could go from being a planet almost the size of Jupiter to a much smaller one of the size of Neptune.
When it was discovered, Hip 67522 B was the youngest known planet that orbiting so close to its host star, but since then, astronomers have detected a couple of similar systems and it is likely that there are more dozens in the nearby universe.
The Cheops satellite has contributed to this investigation in a way that had not been planned, as it was designed to characterize the size and atmosphere of exoplanets.
The ESA Cheops project scientist, Maximillian Günther, stressed that it is “really beautiful to see how the mission contributes to this and other results that go far beyond what had been planned to do.”
With EFE information
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