Giant planets and small stars shaking traditional cosmology

Many The star milky way The galaxy is small, dim Red Dwarf– Stars are much smaller than stars solar In both size and mass. One of them is TO-6894, far from the Earth.

Astronomers previously thought that such stars could not circulate through large planets. Because its mass is only about 20% of the Sun, the planetary system produced from the material surrounding the stars did not contain enough mass to form a giant body. Saturn or Jupiter.

However, when we observed TO-6894, an international research team detected a clear transport signal. This is a temporary reduction in the brightness of the star caused by the planet passing through it. This newly discovered planet, named TOI-6894B, blocks 17% of the star’s light, indicating that the planet is quite large. The signal was picked up by Passing an exoplanet survey satellite Observation equipment fired by (Tess), NASA Hunting planets orbiting stars outside our solar system.

This means TOI6894 is “the lowest mass star known to host such a planet,” and Edward Bryant, a fellow at Warwick University’s Astrophysics Awards. Press Statement. This discovery appears to overturn traditional theories about how planets form. “This discovery will be a cornerstone for understanding the extremes of giant planet formation,” Bryant said.

Astronomers from the University of London and Warwick University have caused data on roughly 91,000 red star stars observed by Tess before discovering the planet TO-6894B as part of a global collaboration with partners in Chile, the US and Europe. After that, there was the nature of TOI-6894B. Revealed by additional observations It is made from other telescopes. According to these, the radius of TOI-6894B is slightly larger than that of Saturn, but its mass is only about half of the giant that rang. Its density is just 0.33 g/cm³ and is very light, indicating it is an expanding gas planet.

TOI-6894 is nearly 40% smaller than the previous record of the smallest star with a planet of this size. This fact brings a serious contradiction with traditional theories of planet formation.

The widely accepted planetary layer model, “Core accumulation theory,“Around the star there are rings of dust and rock known as protranetary discs, suggesting that the material of this disc gather together to form the planet’s core. If you start this way, a large gas planet will become huge by attaching gas around the gas. The formation of giant gas planets does not grow.

Based on this theory, it is estimated that TO-6894B requires more than 120 times more solid matter than Earth’s. However, the observation disk surrounding star TO-6894 contains at most 58 times the mass of the Earth. This increases the possibility of an alternative planet formation mechanism that exists.