Kent David
Wasp-12B
Imagine a planet so dense that diamond is abundant there as limestone is on Earth… Well, approximately 4,000 light years away, deep in the Auriga constellation, is WASP-12b a planet where that is exactly the case. You’d better get in there quick, though because this planet is being literally devoured by its own sun.
Wasp-12b orbits its star at a distance of only 3.4 million kilometers. I know that sounds like a lot, but it’s less than 1/4 of the distance between the Earth and our sun. As a result, the planet is being ripped to shreds. Its surface temperature is over 2,200 C and the colossal gravitational forces acting upon it have skewed it into an egg shape.
At the moment it is about three times the size of Jupiter, but it’s losing 6 trillion kilograms of mass every single second. It’s estimated that the planet may only have another 10 million years left before it’s entirely consumed. Before the planet’s discovery in April 2008, scientists had speculated that events like this could occur, but this is the first ever time it has actually been observed.
Interesting phenomenon! Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
I Agreed to that!
Nice!
Interesting! Given the size of this planet, one wonders why it never became a star – it is thought that Jupiter would have done so if it had had more mass, which Wasp-12B appears to have. There are many known examples of stars devouring smaller companion stars.
Agreed to that! Thank you for reading my post, I really appreciate it 😀
End of the world theory also has that idea that our star will be eaten by the other stars.
Yes, well – there are some very weird and wonderful theories on that score!
Very informative indeed, since at least I did not know nothing about it yet therefore; thank you very much.
Hahahah I hope you did read all of it but yeah thanks for dropping by 🙂