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Dr. Ekaterina Ilin<\/a> of ASTRON, Dr. Katja Poppenh\u00e4ger<\/a> of the Leibniz\u2011Institut f\u00fcr Astrophysik Potsdam, and Dr. Harish Vedantham<\/a> of ASTRON unraveled this cosmic feedback loop by scouring five years of space\u2011telescope data.<\/p>\n HIP 67522 b causes star eruptions<\/p>\n Most suns spew occasional flare<\/a> explosions when tangled magnetic fields snap, yet HIP 67522 lights up more often near the moment its innermost exoplanet crosses the stellar disk. <\/p>\n That timing pins the blame on the planet\u2019s motion rather than on random stellar moods. The research team tracked this smoking gun with NASA\u2019s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite\u202f(TESS)<\/a>.<\/p>\n HIP\u202f67522\u202fb belongs to the family of hot Jupiter<\/a> gas giants that hug their suns far tighter than Mercury does ours, soaking up fierce radiation. <\/p>\n Because the planet sits inside the star\u2019s sprawling magnetic field, its own motion drags field lines like stretched rubber bands.<\/p>\n When these magnetic field lines<\/a> become twisted and then released, energy is blasted back toward both bodies.<\/p>\n \u201c\u202fWe\u2019ve found the first clear evidence of flaring star\u2011planet interaction, where a planet triggers energetic eruptions on its host star,\u202f\u201d said Dr.\u202fIlin. <\/p>\n She noted that the flare\u2011boosting partnership has persisted for at least three years, long enough to measure its toll.<\/p>\n A teenager among planets<\/p>\n Astronomers estimate that the HIP\u202f67522 system is only 17 million years old, a mere adolescent by cosmic standards. <\/p>\n Youth matters because young stars<\/a> spin fast, drive stronger magnetism, and shower nearby worlds with charged particles<\/a>.<\/p>\n HIP\u202f67522\u202fb inflates to roughly Jupiter\u2019s width even though its mass is lower, suggesting that starlight and particle storms have puffed up its skies. <\/p>\n James Webb Space Telescope (JWST<\/a>) observations already hint at an extended shroud of hydrogen escaping the planet, which matches models of photoevaporation.<\/p>\n \u201c\u202fThe planet is essentially subjecting itself to an intense bombardment of radiation and particles from these induced flares,\u201d stated Dr. Vedantham. <\/p>\n He suspects that self\u2011inflicted space weather speeds up atmospheric escape, a process that can strip thousands of tons of gas from a planet each second.<\/p>\n HIP 67522 b is rapidly shrinking<\/p>\n Computer simulations of star\u2011planet electromagnetic coupling predict that the extra flare energy pours into the planet\u2019s upper layers, raising temperatures by hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit. <\/p>\n Heat causes the air to swell, increasing the cross\u2011section that stellar ultraviolet rays<\/a> can hit, and leading to a vicious cycle that accelerates mass loss.<\/p>\n If the current pace holds, HIP\u202f67522\u202fb could shed enough hydrogen and helium to shrink into a mini\u2011Neptune<\/a> within 100 million years. <\/p>\n It may even become a bare, rocky core after that. Such transformations explain why many mature planetary systems harbor small sub\u2011Neptunes while very close giant planets are rarer.<\/p>\n Similar run\u2011away erosion may have sculpted planets like CoRoT\u20117\u202fb<\/a>, where today only a scorched super\u2011Earth remains. Watching HIP\u202f67522\u202fb in real time offers a front\u2011row seat to the earlier stages of that evolution.<\/p>\n Telltale signals from space telescopes<\/p>\n TESS supplied continuous light curves that revealed minute brightness bumps whenever a flare lit up the surface. European Space Agency\u2019s CHEOPS<\/a> spacecraft refined the planet\u2019s transit clock, confirming the synergy between orbit and explosion.<\/p>\n Out of fifteen reliable flares tagged by the team, eleven clustered near the transit phase, a pattern with less than a 1 in 10,000 chance of happening by luck. <\/p>\n An accompanying radio survey with the Australian Telescope Compact Array<\/a> saw the star crackle but missed any planet\u2011powered radio bursts, likely because such flashes were too faint to detect.<\/p>\n Magnetohydrodynamic models predict that radio signatures scale with planetary magnetic strength, and a bloated gas giant may not host the punchy field required. <\/p>\n Even so, the optical confirmation alone cements HIP\u202f67522 as the strongest laboratory yet for star\u2011planet interaction.<\/p>\n Many more systems like HIP\u202f67522<\/p>\n Thousands of planets race around their host stars in orbits shorter than ten days, and many of those stars are quieter and older than HIP\u202f67522. <\/p>\n If a youthful planet can already damage itself through magnetic mischief, older cousins might once have looked very different.<\/p>\n Flaring star\u2011planet pairs also complicate the hunt for life. Energetic particles break apart molecules, including water and methane, which are key ingredients that telescopes search for when sizing up habitability.<\/p>\n Astronomers now plan to aim the Hubble Space Telescope\u2019s<\/a> ultraviolet spectrograph at HIP\u202f67522\u202fb during future transits, hoping to catch escaping gas in the act. <\/p>\n Ground arrays such as the upcoming Square Kilometre Array<\/a> could chase elusive radio sparks, testing the limits of planetary dynamos.<\/p>\n More reliable data will come as TESS continues its mission and CHEOPS transitions to Europe\u2019s PLATO later this decade. <\/p>\n By comparing planets of various ages and orbits around their stars, scientists expect to map how magnetic violence writes, and erases, planetary atmospheres.<\/p>\n This drama that is unfolding in the Centaurus constellation shows that the relationship between a planet and its star is anything but one-sided.<\/p>\n The study is published in Nature<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.\u00a0<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Astronomers discovered a strange exoplanet, HIP 67522 b, that orbiting a star roughly 417 light\u2011years away. Because the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[79,193],"class_list":["post-7332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}