NASA Planet Hunter Discovers the Ugliest Place in the Universe

(NLDO) - BD+05 4868 Ab is the fastest disintegrating planet ever known.

According to Live Science, NASA's "planet hunter" TESS, which has helped identify more than 6,000 worlds outside the solar system, found the planet BD+05 4868 Ab in a state that shocked scientists.

Described as a "miserable planet" by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Pennsylvania State University (USA), BD+05 4868 Ab is disintegrating too quickly in a fierce tug-of-war with its parent star.

Every million years, it loses mass equivalent to that of the Moon.

An illustration depicting a planet disintegrating under the influence of its parent star - Photo: Robert Lea

The "unfortunate planet" orbits a star called BD+05 4868 A - located 141 light years away - with a period of just 30.5 hours.

It appears with a giant dust tail, up to 9 million km long, stretching across half of the planet's orbit around its parent star.

The tail of BD+05 4868 Ab is so large and dense that as it passes over the star's surface, it blocks 1% of the star's light.

Unlike comets, BD+05 4868 Ab's dust trail is divided into two distinct parts: One part, which precedes the planet in its orbit, consists of particles the size of desert sand. Meanwhile, the trail behind the planet consists of finer particles like soot.

The planet now has about the same mass as the Moon. At this rate of material loss, it could soon disappear completely.

"The rate of evaporation is catastrophic, and we are extremely fortunate to witness the final hours of this dying planet," said Dr. Hon.

Of the more than 6,000 planets that NASA's TESS has found, only three are decaying. But BD+05 4868 Ab is the fastest-decaying world, possibly because its parent star is much brighter than the rest of the decaying planets.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/tho-san-hanh-tinh-nasa-phat-hien-noi-bat-hanh-nhat-vu-tru-196250120110910754.htm