NASA discovers exoplanet where a year lasts just 21 hrs

Washington DC: American space agency NASA found a planet outside the Solar System where a year lasts 21 Earth hours. The agency says that the planet is super-hot and is the size of Neptune, while it orbits its star at an incredibly close orbit contributing a year that lasts in a matter of hours, NDTV reported.

The planet is identified as TOI-3261 b and was discovered using a Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), backed by follow-up observations from ground-based telescopes in Australia, Chile, and South Africa. As per the measurements obtained, the planet belongs to a rare category of “hot Neptunes”. Such planets are very small in size, very close to their stars and have extremely short orbital periods.

Scientists in NASA utilized advanced modelling to reconstruct the 5 billion-year history of the star and planet system, which resulted in findings that suggested that TOI-3261 b was born as a massive gas giant like Jupiter but gone through some significant transformation.

The scientists believe that two phenomena must have stripped the plat of a substantial amount of mass. The first one was photoevaporation where stellar energy dispersed gas particles and the second, tidal stripping where the planet’s gravitational pull removed layers of gas. The planet is also found to be twice as denser than Neptune, suggesting that the mentioned phenomena stripped the planet of lighter elements and left only the heavier ones.

The scientists concluded that the planet’s atmosphere was once comprised of a diverse of elements, however, the exact components remain unknown. Experts suggest observing the planet in infrared light to find the original components of the planet, utilizing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. This would allow them to identify the distinctive molecular fingerprints in its atmosphere, NDTV reported.