The Earth is in the perfect position to the sun. He can’t burn everything down or make the planet hot enough to not support life. But he also does not allow the planet to go into another ice age, but some planets aren’t lucky. Recently, NASA spotted an Exoplanet meltdown, something they’ve never experienced before, and it shows the real power of a star when it gets too close to a planet. TOI 1227 b, the planet in trouble, is only about 8 million years old. The planet itself is the size of Jupiter, but orbits its star so closely that it makes Mercury look distant.
Earth is no different from the planet that’s under attack
An exoplanet is a normal cosmic body that orbits a star, like the planets in our solar system. On the other hand, those planets don’t have the right conditions to support life, but still they offer a view and a study for scientists to better understand how the development of the solar system works. Ours was formed billions of years ago, but others didn’t have the same luck.
Planets can just be wandering around in the universe without a star to orbit. Inside the habitable zone, an imaginary delimitate area that scientists believe can have life, there are billions that don’t have a sun, so they can’t be called an exoplanet. But this is not the case for the TOI 1227 b, the cosmic body that is showing scientists what a meltdown looks like.
Exoplanet meltdown captured by NASA
A young star called TOI 1227 is doing serious damage to a planet that got too close. It’s hitting it with waves of X-rays strong enough to break the planet apart — and for the first time, NASA is watching it happen as it unfolds. With the help of the Chandra X-ray Observatory, experts are seeing what the early stages of some planetary systems really look like — and it’s pure chaos.
The problem is, this little star is blasting the planet with nonstop X-rays, causing the exoplanet meltdown. And TOI 1227 b is paying the price. Its thick atmosphere is being burned away and pushed into space, creating a tail that looks a bit like a comet. If this keeps going, the planet could lose so much gas that it ends up as a much smaller, rocky world.
Chandra X-Ray is making everything possible to see
By looking at the X-rays, scientists figured out how fast the exoplanet meltdown is happening, with the planet losing its atmosphere. And it’s a lot — around the same amount Earth has, but every couple of hundred years. Give it a few million more, and TOI 1227 b might shrink beyond recognition.
Scientists found out the planet was this young by looking at how its host star moves through space and comparing that motion with other stars of known ages. Then, by checking the brightness and temperature of the star, they lined up the numbers with models of stellar development.
The meltdown process is taking the life out of a young planet. That makes TOI 1227 b one of the youngest planets ever seen using the transit method — when a planet passes in front of its star and causes a tiny dip in brightness.
Small planet orbiting a small star
It’s also the youngest one orbiting such a small star, and the only one this young in such a wide orbit. The fact that it’s under fire from X-rays makes it even more interesting. By keeping an eye on this system, astronomers might get a clearer picture of how planets change when they’re still growing — and what can go wrong along the way, as the exoplanet meltdown is now a real threat.