Discovered 'giant world' 325 light years from Earth

If placed next to the Solar System, everything in the newly discovered alien world will look like mythical giants, defying the principles of planet formation.

According to Science Alert, it is a binary star system called b Cantauri, possessing a giant planet named b Centauri b, located 325 light-years away, discovered by a team of scientists from Stockholm University ( Sweden).

Artist's description of the newly discovered giant planet in the binary star system

The two "Suns" in the star system are extremely massive, with a combined mass of 10 times our Sun - a star that is already among the most massive in the universe. The two stars orbit so closely together that they were initially mistaken for one.

Published in the science journal Nature, planet b Centauri b is just as massive: 10.9 times the mass of Jupiter, or 3,466 times Earth. It orbits 566 astronomical units from its parent pair (1 astronomical unit equals the distance from the Sun to Earth).

Even though it's so far away, because the parent star is so bright and the planet is so big, it's clear enough for scientists to capture.

"Planet b Centauri b is a world whose environment is completely different from what we experience here, on Earth, and in the Solar System. It's a harsh environment, dominated by a radiation extremely large, where everything is on a giant scale," said astronomer Gayathri Viswanath, one of the study's lead authors.

It is the tremendous distance from the parent star pair that keeps the giant planet from being vaporized by the terrible radiation from these great and fierce "mothers".

Although it is said to be difficult to live in, the giant world offers many other interesting things. Previously, astronomers assumed that all planets form according to the core accretion model: in a molecular cloud, stars form and begin to become a vortex that pulls matter toward itself, leading to a A young star with a giant disk of gas and dust.

Over time, this disk of gas and dust gradually accreted into planets. The larger the planet, the smaller the disk of gas and dust, and the result is a "clean" star system like the Solar System. But the newly discovered superplanet is too far away from its parent star to form according to the above model.

Therefore, it is time for astronomers to reconsider known models of planet formation.