Today I want to talk to you all about some strange things happening in the universe. Things that even surprised scientists.
Before I start I want to thank Pancake for this amazing layout!
The Planet & the Small Star
Back in November of 2017, National Geographic made an article, called Bizarrely Huge Planet Discovered Orbiting Tiny Star, talking about a massive planet that is orbiting a small dwarf. It’s important to keep in mind that the massive planet, called NGTS-1b, is the size of Jupiter while the dwarf is only half the width of the sun, according to National Geographic.
This stunned scientists due to the fact that there were current theories stating that “…small starts grow small planets, and bigger stars grow bigger planets,” as stated by National Geographic.
The two were found by the Next-Generation Transit Survey’s telescopes in Chile, which are specialized in exoplanet hunting.
In order to find these, astronomers watch for, as stated by National Geographic, “brief blips in starlight that occur as the planet crosses its star’s face.” Due to this happening, it has revealed other exoplanets found in the Milky Way which are mostly found by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft.
Although this strange phenomenon is new to us, it has been reported a similar incident with a hot Jupiter orbiting the M dwarf KOI-254. However, cases like these are rarely every reported so despite it not being new it is still a rare occurrence.
It’s mostly hard to find these types of instances due to the fact that its parent stars are small and faint. So, theoretically, it’s possible that there are more cases such as these out there.
Hope I made you guys think a little and wonder more about the strange things happening in the universe!