Newly discovered: Mysteriously large planet orbits a small star

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The newly discovered planet, which orbits an M-dwarf star called LHS 3154 in a 3.7-day orbit, is about 13 times larger than Earth, according to research published Thursday in the journal Science. “A star with a mass of only 0.11 times that of the Sun has never before been observed,” astronomer Frédéric Masset of the National University of Mexico wrote in a commentary on the study published in the same journal.

According to the study’s authors, including a researcher from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, current planet formation theories cannot explain how such a large planet could form around LHS 3154.

An M dwarf star is the smallest and coldest type of star. Theories say that M dwarfs do not produce particularly large planets. Stars form from large clouds of gas and dust. The material left over from the star formation process forms a disk around the star from which planets are later born.

According to theories, the amount of material in these disks around stars determines how large the planets that form around them can be. And the amount of disk material depends largely on the mass of the star. The smaller the host star, the smaller the planets around it must be.

According to the estimates of the researchers involved in the study, the amount of dust in the disk around LHS 3154 should be at least ten times greater than the amount of dust in the disks around M dwarf stars. They now want to learn exactly how this huge planet emerged in future studies. (SDA)

Source : Blick