Superplanet 3,752 times heavier than Earth discovered

(NLDO) - Around two distant dwarf stars, European spacecraft have found a giant planet and a strange thing that is half star, half planet.

Analyzing data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia spacecraft, scientists discovered a planet named Gaia-4b and a brown dwarf named Gaia-5b orbiting two dwarf stars.

They are all incredibly strange and great worlds .

Graphic image depicting planet Gaia-4b and brown dwarf Gaia-5b orbiting two orange and red dwarf stars - Photo: ESA

According to a paper published in the Astronomical Journal, Gaia-4b is a "super-Jupiter" planet, a gas planet similar to Jupiter but much larger. Measurements show that its mass is 11.8 times that of Jupiter, or 3,752 times that of Earth.

It orbits a red dwarf or orange dwarf star, called Gaia-4, and is located about 244 light-years from Earth.

Sci-News quoted Dr. Guðmundur Stefánsson from the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands), a member of the research team, that this planet has an orbital period of 571 days, meaning it orbits quite far from its parent star and is relatively cold.

Gaia-4b is also one of the first exoplanets discovered using astrophotometric techniques and is one of the largest known planets orbiting a low-mass star.

Another interesting discovery is the brown dwarf Gaia-5b, which orbits the red dwarf star Gaia-5, about 134 light-years from our planet.

Brown dwarfs are some of the weirdest objects in the universe. They typically have masses greater than 13 times that of Jupiter, are too large to be planets, and are not typically born from the protoplanetary disk of any star.

However, Gaia-5b — like other brown dwarfs — is still too small to sustain nuclear fusion in its core, which would qualify it as a star.

As such, it is considered a "failed star" or "high-class planet" and is probably a companion to Gaia-5, rather than a "child" of this red dwarf.

In this case, scientists calculated the mass of this half-star, half-planet object to be about 21 times that of Jupiter, or 6,678 times that of Earth.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/phat-hien-sieu-hanh-tinh-nang-gap-3752-lan-trai-dat-196250207092154918.htm