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Scientists have discovered a planet that is way too big for its bantam star . Its existence could upend everything we thought we knew about how solar systems word form , researchers say .
The ultra - cool nanus star , named LHS 3154 , lies51 light - yearsfrom oursolar systemand is about nine times less monolithic than our sun . In demarcation , its planet , LHS 3154b , is 13 times more massive than Earth . That variety of cosmic mismatch is previously unheard of — the astronomic combining weight of finding a watermelon on a grapevine .
Planet LHS 3154b is 13 times more massive than Earth and its star is 9 times smaller than the sun.
" We would n’t bear a planet this heavy around such a low - hatful star to exist , " study co - authorSuvrath Mahadevan , an uranologist at Penn State , said in astatement .
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Mahadevan and his squad found the system using an official document known as the Habitable Zone Planet Finder ( HPF ) at the McDonald Observatory in Texas . HPF is designed to detect ( comparatively ) nerveless stars like LHS 3154 , as the planets orb them are more likely to have water on their surface . However , the investigator were n’t expecting to find an oversized satellite revolve one .
While LHS 3154b is far from the most monolithic exoplanet discovered so far ( that honorlikely goes to the gas giant HAT - P-67 b , which has a spoke about twice that of Jupiter ) , its sizing comparative to its star is record - breaking , and the breakthrough gainsay the current scientific understanding of how world systems form . When a young star emerges from a cloud of cosmic dust , the remainder of the fabric in that cloud becomes a magnetic disk around the baby sun . This disk of dust , gas and pebble then begins to concentrate into increasingly large ball of rock’n’roll , which eventually snowball into satellite .
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But LHS 3154b is so magnanimous that research worker think it would demand about 10 times the amount of detritus that ’s judge to have been present around its newly organise wizard . Based on this variant , it seems probable that such systems are extremely rare . The research worker hope that further analysis will reveal just how the planet dumbfound so big — and why its star is so minuscule in comparability .
" This find really aim home the point of just how little we know about the universe , " Mahadevan said .
The scientists published their finding Nov. 30 in the journalScience .
