Baby 'Hot Jupiter' In Trouble, Bound To Be Destroyed By Host Star

One of the youngest exoplanet ever discovered is in danger of being destroyed by its own star. Tagged as PTFO8-8695b, this baby planet's sun is rapidly tearing it apart.

According to a press release from Rice University, the baby planet is categorized as a "hot jupiter" and has a tight orbit, allowing it to go around its sun for just 11 hours while its layers are rapidly being stripped away by gravity.

Exoplanet PTFO8-8695b has been discovered several years ago and is just two million years old. Astronomers identified the planet upon noticing that its parent sun occasionally dimmed, which means that a spacial object is affecting or blocking its brightness.

The researchers then analyzed the highly energized hydrogen atoms (H-alpha atoms) from the emitted light and came to a conclusion that the spacial object is actually a very young exoplanet.

Dr. Christopher Johns-Krull from Rice University said, "We compared our evidence against every other scenario we could imagine, and the weight of the evidence suggests this is one of the youngest planets yet observed.”

According to CS Monitor, PTFO8-8695b is located in the Orion constellation. Researchers say that the baby exoplanet could have been formed farther from its present location and "migrated" to where it is today -- closer to its sun.

“We don’t know the ultimate fate of this planet,” Johns-Krull explained. “It likely formed farther away from the star and has migrated in to a point where it’s being destroyed. We know there are close-orbiting planets around middle-aged stars that are presumably in stable orbits. What we don’t know is how quickly this young planet is going to lose its mass and whether it will lose too much to survive.”

To date, astronomers have discovered 3,2000 exoplanets, but discovering young planets are very rare. Moreover, Johns-Krull said that studying their behavior is harder because there are only few that are bright or young enough to be viewed via telescopes.