Terrifying discovery near Earth: Planet 'stolen soul'

Around an orange dwarf star just 130 light years from Earth, scientists have discovered a type of planet that has never been seen before and is difficult to explain.

Astrophysicist Susana Barros from the Institute of Space Sciences and Astrophysics (IA - Portugal) said the two new "treasures" are among the five planets of the orange dwarf star HD 23472 .

According to Science Alert, over nearly two years - from July 2019 to April 2021 - Dr. Barros's research team collected data from radial velocity measurements of the star using the ESPRESSO spectrograph on the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

Graphic image depicting a five-planet system - (Photo: SCI-NEWS)

They have identified all five exoplanets around this "orange sun". The closest is HD 23472d, which has an orbital period of 3.98 days, a radius of 0.75 times that of Earth, and a mass of about 0.54 times that of Earth. Next is HD 23472e , which has an orbital period of 7.9 days, a radius of 0.82 times that of Earth, and a mass of 0.76 times that of Earth.

The third planet HD 23472f is slightly larger than Earth, about 1.13 times larger but only 0.64 times as massive, with a period of 12.16 days. Next is HD 23472b , twice as large as Earth, 8.42 times as massive - possibly a super-Earth, with a period of 17.67 days.

The farthest is HD 23472c, which is 3.37 times larger than Earth, has 1.85 times the mass, and a year on it is 29.8 days long.

The two main treasures are the two closest and smallest planets HD 23472d and HD 23472e . They are an extremely rare type of planet called a "supermercury" - similar in properties to Mercury but larger, and surprisingly appear in pairs.

Mercury of the Solar System is known as a "soul-stolen" planet , where there is no atmosphere so there are no clear seasons, the temperature is extremely terrible, the night is minus 173 degrees Celsius, the day is scorching hot up to 427 degrees.

Mercury orbits the Sun with a highly eccentric, elongated elliptical orbit, is as cratered as the Sun, and has been geologically inactive for billions of years. All in all, it has all the makings of a hellish world , with all the elements that destroy life combined.

The biggest theory for the existence of such a deadly thing is that a violent collision during the planet's "infancy" left it oddly off-center and stripped of its atmosphere.

The second, less plausible theory is that something mysterious literally stripped the planet of its many materials, stealing its "soul" and turning it into a dead mass of rock.

However, with the discovery of these two new " supermercuries" , the seemingly most reasonable hypothesis of a violent collision has collapsed, because it is difficult for two large collisions to coincide, in the same way, with two planets lying next to each other to create two dead rocks at the same time.

The authors also caution that the lack of atmospheres in these two supermercuries is only indirectly demonstrated by density measurements and will need to be confirmed by a more powerful telescope.

It's certainly something they'll be pursuing. Dr Barros said the initial discovery opens a new window into how these rare, bizarre planets form. At 130 light years from their parent star, they're still one of the closest extrasolar worlds ever discovered.

The study was recently published in the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.