A Star is Dissolving its Baby Planet

A Star is Dissolving its Baby Planet
By Evan Gough (https://ift.tt/avMc2KY)

Astronomers have found a young star bathing a planet in intense X-ray radiation, wearing it away at a rapid rate. The planet is Jupiter-sized and orbits its red dwarf star at a fifth the distance from Mercury to the Sun. It's only 8 million years old, and researchers estimate that within a billion years, it will lose its entire atmosphere, going from 17 Earth masses down to just 2 Earth masses. They estimate that it's losing an Earth's atmosphere worth of mass every 200 years.

July 17, 2025 at 04:53AM
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