This speedy planet could be spiralling in towards its star
A newly discovered planet has a ‘year’ that is just 16 hours long, the quickest orbit of any so-called ‘hot-Jupiter’ –a gas giant with an extremely short orbit – ever discovered.
The planet, TOI-2109b, was discovered by the exoplanethunting satellite TESS. It is around five times the mass of Jupiter and just 2.4 million km away from its star. Its course is so tight that the planet is probably in a ‘decaying orbit’ and spiralling in towards its star at the centre of its system.
“In one or two years we may be able to detect how the planet moves closer to its star,” says Ian Wong, who led the study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “In our lifetime we will not see the planet fall into its star. But give it another 10 million years, and this planet might not be there.” https://tess.mit.edu/