Astronomers using the European Space Agency’s Cheops mission have caught an exoplanet that seems to be triggering flares of radiation from the star it orbits. These tremendous explosions are blasting away the planet’s wispy atmosphere, causing it to shrink every year.
This is the first-ever evidence of a “planet with a death wish.” Though it was theorized to be possible since the nineties, the flares seen in this research are around 100 times more energetic than expected.
The work is published in the journal Nature.
This planet’s star makes our sun look sleepy
Thanks to telescopes like the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS...
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