MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE
HAVE ASTRONOMERS FOUND A SUPER-HELLISH PLANET?
A fiery Earth-like planet that’s more volcanically active than Io may have been discovered
Reported by David Crookes
© NASA; ESA; Adobe Stock
Professor Stephen Kane was intrigued and excited. As he looked at the data, made sure P his calculations were correct and reality began to quickly set in, he sat back in his chair, a look of astonishment stretching across his face. In the course of studying a star system known to harbour a giant planet, he’d come across an object which was unlike anything he had seen before. And the discovery has the potential to be rather explosive. The object is some 66 light years from Earth in a star system called HD 104067 in the southern constellation of Corvus. It has long been known to contain a star with 82 per cent of the mass and 77 per cent of the radius of the Sun, and it’s said to be about 5 billion years old. The exoplanet of primary interest to Kane was HD 104067 b – a sub-Saturn planet with a 55-day orbit that is at least 0.2 times the mass of Jupiter. But it’s the other findings in this part of space which really caught his attention.
Using the transit method, which detects exoplanets as they pass in front of their stars, causing the brightness to dip periodically, Kane appears to have discovered another planet closely orbiting the orange dwarf star every 2.2 days. What makes it especially remarkable is that it appears to be erupting with a huge number of volcanoes – if observed directly, the object would be glowing a fiery red colour and there would be loads of hot lava gushing across the surface. Kane was understandably flabbergasted at the discovery because a planet this extreme is unique. “It’s amazing this can actually exist,” he says.
The planetary astrophysicist at the University of California, Riverside, has long been fascinated by star systems known to be harbouring planets. A specialist in exoplanetary science, Kane is a leading expert in planetary habitability and the habitable zone of planetary systems, and he’s had a hand in the discovery of hundreds of exoplanets. Among his finds is a cold super-Earth called OGLE-2005-BLG-390L b close to the centre of the Milky Way. He was also part of the Super Wide Angle Search for Planets (SuperWASP) team which was handed an award following the discovery of 18 exoplanets. In that sense, it was no surprise to learn that he has likely triumphed yet again as he and his colleagues focused their attention on a star system that had been analysed using the ground-based High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) and High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES) instruments in combination with NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).