NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has discovered a planet that, by all stretch of the imagination, shouldn’t be there. It’s called 8 Ursae Minoris b, and it’s orbiting a red giant star which, scientists say, should have engulfed the planet. Marc Hon suggested two possible scenarios that might explain why the planet is still there.
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The first is that when two stars, about the size of our sun, were orbiting one another, one star accelerates its expansion, becoming a white dwarf, a relatively smaller but denser star, before it collides with the other star, thus mitigating the impact and leaving the planet unscathed.
The second theory is that when the two stars had merged and exploded, a copious amount of debris scattered and those remnants coalesced to form the planet that we see today. If the second scenario were the case, then scientists say that this might give a deeper insight into planetary formation and destruction.
(Image credit: Javier Miranda/Unsplash)
Source: neatorama