The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) scientists have discovered a new exo planet with the help of Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT). According to reports, the newly discovered planet is being vaporized by its own star.
The temperature of the new exo planet , dubbed KELT-9b, has got a dayside temperature hotter than around 4316 degree Celsius (7,800 degrees Fahrenheit). KELT-9b is hotter than most of the stars. "This is the hottest gas giant planet that has ever been discovered," Scott Gaudi, the lead author of the study and an astronomy professor at The Ohio State University in Columbus said
The scientists said that a blue A-type star called KELT-9 orbits round the planet. The star is believed to be much hotter and is said to unravel the planet through evaporation.
The exo planet is 2.8 times more massive than the gas giant Jupiter and possesses half its density. While, its 300 million-years-old KELT-9 is a young star and is twice as big and hot as our Sun.
"KELT-9 radiates so much ultraviolet radiation that it may completely evaporate the planet," Keivan Stassun, a professor of physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, who directed the study with Gaudi said.
"KELT-9 will swell to become a red giant star in a few hundred million years. The long-term prospects for life or real estate for that matter, on KELT-9b are not looking good," Stassun added.
This strange planet is tidally locked to its star, just like the Earth is to the Moon. One of the sides of the exoplanet faces its star while the other one is always in perpetual darkness.
As the planet gets exposed to the UV radiation, the scientists say that the dayside of the planet can't lead to the formation of molecules like methane, water and carbon dioxide. However, it is still not clear if the nightside of the planet has the presence of these building blocks of life.
"It's a planet by any of the typical definitions of mass, but its atmosphere is almost certainly unlike any other planet we've ever seen, just because of the temperature of its dayside," Gaudi said.
Although, KELT-9b exoplanet is not habitable, but, still the researchers want to examine the planet with the help of NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes, and eventually the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This examination is likely to take place in the year 2018.
