Latest news with #ASTRON
Yahoo
02-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Exoplanets that cling too tightly to their stars trigger their own doom: 'This is a completely new phenomenon'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Some planets take the expression "you're your own worst enemy" to the extreme. At least, that's what astronomers found when they recently discovered a doomed planet clinging to its parent star so tightly that it's triggering explosive outbursts and destroying itself. The clingy, self-destructive extrasolar planet, or "exoplanet," in question is called HIP 67522 b. It orbits a young, 17 million-year-old star so closely that one of its years lasts just one Earth week. Considering our middle-aged star, the sun, is 4.6 billion years old, the stellar parent of this clingy exoplanet (called HIP 67522) is a relative infant. This means it is bursting with energy. Since the mid-1990s, when the first exoplanets were discovered, astronomers have pondered whether exoplanets can orbit their stars closely enough that stellar magnetic fields are impacted. Over 5,000 exoplanet discoveries later and astronomers still hadn't found the answer. That is, until now. "We hadn't seen any systems like HIP 67522 before; when the planet was found, it was the youngest planet known to be orbiting its host star in less than 10 days," team leader and Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) researcher Ekaterina Ilin said in a statement. "I have a million questions because this is a completely new phenomenon, so the details are still not clear." The team discovered HIP 67522 while using NASA's exoplanet hunting spacecraft TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) to survey flaring stars. TESS discovered some interesting characteristics of HIP 67522, prompting a follow-up investigation with the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Cheops (Characterizing Exoplanet Satellite). "We quickly requested observing time with Cheops, which can target individual stars on demand, ultra precisely," Ilin said. "With Cheops, we saw more flares, taking the total count to 15, almost all coming in our direction as the planet transited in front of the star as seen from Earth." Ilin and colleagues discovered that the stellar flares being thrown out by HIP 67522 occur when its clingy planet passes in front of, or "transits," the star. That means these flares are very likely triggered by the planet itself. The team theorizes this occurs because HIP 67522 b is so close to its star that it exerts a magnetic influence on the star. As the planet whips around the star, it gathers energy, which is redirected as waves rippling down the star's magnetic field lines. When a wave hits the stellar surface, a massive flare is triggered. "The planet seems to be triggering particularly energetic flares," Ilin explained. "The waves it sends along the star's magnetic field lines kick off flares at specific moments. But the energy of the flares is much higher than the energy of the waves. "We think that the waves are setting off explosions that are waiting to happen." This is therefore the first hard evidence that planets can influence the behavior of their stars. HIP 67522 b isn't just triggering flares facing nowhere, though. These induced flares are directed toward the world itself. In particular, it is bombarded with around six times the radiation a planet at this orbital distance usually would experience. As you might imagine, this bombardment spells doom for HIP 67522 b. The planet is currently around the size of Jupiter, but it has around the density of candy floss. The planet's wispy outer layers are being stripped away by harsh radiation, causing the planet to lose even the little mass it has. Over the next 100 million years, HIP 67522 b is expected to drop from the size of Jupiter to around the size of Neptune. The team doesn't actually quite know how extreme the damage these self-inflicted flares could be for HIP 67522 b. Related Stories: — 'Vampire stars' explode after eating too much — AI could help reveal why —Could nearby stars have habitable exoplanets? NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory hopes to find out —The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered its 1st exoplanet and snapped its picture (image) "There are two things that I think are most important to do now. The first is to follow up in different wavelengths to find out what kind of energy is being released in these flares — for example, ultraviolet and X-rays are especially bad news for the exoplanet," Ilin said. "The second is to find and study other similar star-planet systems; by moving from a single case to a group of 10 to 100 systems, theoretical astronomers will have something to work with." The team's research was published on Wednesday (July 2) in the journal Nature.
Yahoo
02-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Astronomers detect first known ‘death wish' planet
The outlook isn't great for the exoplanet HIP 67522 b. Over the next 100 million years, powerful magnetic fields and destructive cosmic radiation will continue eating away at the distant planet, reducing it from its current Jupiter-sized mass down to a size resembling Neptune. But these apocalyptic conditions aren't the fault of a nearby black hole. Instead, they're a result of what astronomers describe as the exoplanet's 'clingy' relationship to its host star. 'I have a million questions because this is a completely new phenomenon, so the details are still not clear,' Ekaterina Ilin, a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON), said in a statement. Long theorized but never observed, the first known 'planet with a death wish' is described by Ilin and her colleagues in a study published July 2 in Nature. Astronomers have been studying this exoplanet and its host star HIP 67522 for years with high-tech tools like NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). They already knew that HIP 67522 is slightly larger and cooler than our 4.5-billion-year-old sun, but is also much younger at just 17 million years old. HIP 67522 is also a far more active star than our sun, and routinely emits much stronger energy flares. It also hosts two planets, but HIP 67522 b has a faster orbit than its sibling and takes only seven days to complete a circuit. 'We hadn't seen any systems like HIP 67522 before; when the planet was found it was the youngest planet known to be orbiting its host star in less than 10 days,' explained Ilin. Knowing this, Ilin's team decided to try getting a closer look at HIP 67522 b, and enlisted the European Space Agency's (ESA) exoplanet satellite CHEOPS, for help. CHEOPS is capable of targeting and observing individual stars, and soon documented intermittent flares coming from HIP 67522. 'With CHEOPS we saw more flares, taking the total count to 15, almost all coming in our direction as the planet transited in front of the star as seen from Earth,' said Ilin. This correlation implied that the interactions between the star and its planet were directly responsible for the flares. But there was a problem with this possibility: astronomers long believed stars only behave independently of their host planets. So how could that be possible? 'We find that the 15 flares in HIP 67522 cluster… [indicate] persistent magnetic star–planet interaction in the system,' the authors wrote in their study. The physics also supports the theory. Knowing HIP 67522 b's extremely close orbit, this interplay could be possible if its star possesses a strong magnetic field. And given HIP 67522's age, that's almost a certainty. The current theory is that as the planet amasses energy during its orbit, some of that is redirected in waves along the star's magnetic field lines like someone cracking a whip. Once that wave reaches the end of the magnetic field line, it initiates a major energy flare. However, a large portion of those powerful cosmic rays aren't simply flung into deep space, Instead, they're redirected back to HIP 67522 b itself with six times the radiation than if it had orbited at a safer distance. 'The planet seems to be triggering particularly energetic flares,' added Ilin. 'The waves it sends along the star's magnetic field lines kick off flares at specific moments. But the energy of the flares is much higher than the energy of the waves. We think that the waves are setting off explosions that are waiting to happen.' This means that over the next 100 million years, all of that destructive energy will erode an already wispy atmosphere and shrink the planet's overall mass. Eventually, that atmospheric erosion will be the doom of HIP 76522 b. Luckily, there's plenty of time for astronomers like Ilin to continue studying the unprecedented new find. Researchers hope to follow up their observations by determining the exact types of energy released by each flare. Meanwhile, they intend to scour and find similar star-planet systems to see if any other cosmic death wishes are out there.
Yahoo
02-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Astronomers Found the Most Self-Destructive Planet in the Sky
Stars often whip their planets with solar winds and radiation, pull them ever closer with gravity and sear them with heat. But a newfound planet exerts an unexpectedly strong—and ultimately self-destructive—influence on its star in return. The star HIP 67522 is slightly larger than our sun and shines roughly 408 light-years away in the Scorpius-Centaurus star cluster. It's 17 million years old, a youngster by stellar standards, and has two orbiting planets that are even younger. The innermost of these two planets, a Jupiter-size gas giant called HIP 67522 b, orbits HIP 67522 at a distance of less than 12 times the star's radius—almost seven times closer than Mercury's distance from the sun in our Solar System. This in-your-face proximity, combined with HIP 67522's volatile teenage nature, has created a spectacle astronomers have never seen before: a planet that triggers powerful flares on the surface of its host star, leading to the planet's own slow destruction. 'In a way, we got lucky,' says Ekaterina Ilin, an astrophysicist at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON), who led the study on the HIP 67522 system, published on Wednesday in Nature. 'We took all the star-planet systems that we knew of and just went ahead looking for flares—sudden intense bursts of radiation coming from the star's surface.' Parsing through the data gathered by two space-based telescopes, NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and the European Space Agency's CHEOPS (Characterizing Exoplanet Satellite), Ilin's team noticed that HIP 67522's flares seemed to be synchronized with its closest planet's orbital period. And those flares were gigantic—'thousands of times more energetic than anything the sun can produce,' Ilin says. [Sign up for Today in Science, a free daily newsletter] The orbiting gas giant likely sparks these powerful flares by perturbing the star's strong magnetic field lines as it passes by in its orbit. This sends waves of energy downward along the lines—and when those waves meet the star's surface, a flare bursts out. The star's magnetic loops are 'almost like a spring waiting to be let go,' Ilin says. 'The planet's just giving it this last push.' Based on the team's observations, HIP 67522 b triggers a flare once every Earth day or two. And this action has severe consequences for the planet itself: Ilin estimates the unlucky gas giant gets six times more radiation than it would if it wasn't triggering flares and blasting away its own atmosphere. At this pace, Ilin's team says, HIP 67522 b will shrink from Jupiter's size to Neptune's in about 100 million years. 'Flaring might cut the lifetime of the planet's atmosphere in half,' she says. Researchers had suspected this type of star-planet interplay might occur, but they had never previously seen it, says Antoine Strugarek, an astrophysicist at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission's (CEA's) center CEA Paris-Saclay, who was not involved in the new study. 'This is the first time we see very convincing evidence such interaction has been actually detected,' he says. Ilin says it's too early to draw far-reaching conclusions from this first example of the phenomenon. As a next step, she says, researchers can compare HIP 67522 b with the other planet in the system, which orbits a bit farther from the star, to calculate how much mass the more closely orbiting world is actually losing through this process compared with the more distant one, which is likely only hit with random flares. Another unanswered question is exactly how the flare triggering works. 'Is it a wave [of magnetic energy] that propagates from the planet?' Ilin wonders. She suggests that what happens could be similar to an effect that has been seen on the sun: smaller solar flares sometimes perturb nearby magnetic loops and tip them over the edge to snap and produce a larger flare. But perhaps the most important question is how common the newly observed phenomenon is. For now, Ilin wants to focus on finding more systems where planets induce stellar flares that scientists can study. 'Once we figure out how it works, we can turn it into a planet-detection technique,' she says. Instead of searching for the planets themselves, researchers could look for stars that flare following a certain pattern—suggesting they, too, might have planets with a self-destructive bent.
Scientific American
02-07-2025
- Science
- Scientific American
Astronomers Found the Most Self-Destructive Planet in the Sky
Stars often whip their planets with solar winds and radiation, pull them ever closer with gravity and sear them with heat. But a newfound planet exerts an unexpectedly strong—and ultimately self-destructive—influence on its star in return. The star HIP 67522 is slightly larger than our sun and shines roughly 408 light-years away in the Scorpius-Centaurus star cluster. It's 17 million years old, a youngster by stellar standards, and has two orbiting planets that are even younger. The innermost of these two planets, a Jupiter-size gas giant called HIP 67522 b, orbits HIP 67522 at a distance of less than 12 times the star's radius—almost seven times closer than Mercury's distance from the sun in our Solar System. This in-your-face proximity, combined with HIP 67522's volatile teenage nature, has created a spectacle astronomers have never seen before: a planet that triggers powerful flares on the surface of its host star, leading to the planet's own slow destruction. 'In a way, we got lucky,' says Ekaterina Ilin, an astrophysicist at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON), who led the study on the HIP 67522 system, published on Wednesday in Nature. 'We took all the star-planet systems that we knew of and just went ahead looking for flares—sudden intense bursts of radiation coming from the star's surface.' Parsing through the data gathered by two space-based telescopes, NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and the European Space Agency's CHEOPS (Characterizing Exoplanet Satellite), Ilin's team noticed that HIP 67522's flares seemed to be synchronized with its closest planet's orbital period. And those flares were gigantic—'thousands of times more energetic than anything the sun can produce,' Ilin says. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. The orbiting gas giant likely sparks these powerful flares by perturbing the star's strong magnetic field lines as it passes by in its orbit. This sends waves of energy downward along the lines—and when those waves meet the star's surface, a flare bursts out. The star's magnetic loops are 'almost like a spring waiting to be let go,' Ilin says. 'The planet's just giving it this last push.' Based on the team's observations, HIP 67522 b triggers a flare once every Earth day or two. And this action has severe consequences for the planet itself: Ilin estimates the unlucky gas giant gets six times more radiation than it would if it wasn't triggering flares and blasting away its own atmosphere. At this pace, Ilin's team says, HIP 67522 b will shrink from Jupiter's size to Neptune's in about 100 million years. 'Flaring might cut the lifetime of the planet's atmosphere in half,' she says. Researchers had suspected this type of star-planet interplay might occur, but they had never previously seen it, says Antoine Strugarek, an astrophysicist at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission's (CEA's) center CEA Paris-Saclay, who was not involved in the new study. 'This is the first time we see very convincing evidence such interaction has been actually detected,' he says. Ilin says it's too early to draw far-reaching conclusions from this first example of the phenomenon. As a next step, she says, researchers can compare HIP 67522 b with the other planet in the system, which orbits a bit farther from the star, to calculate how much mass the more closely orbiting world is actually losing through this process compared with the more distant one, which is likely only hit with random flares. Another unanswered question is exactly how the flare triggering works. 'Is it a wave [of magnetic energy] that propagates from the planet?' Ilin wonders. She suggests that what happens could be similar to an effect that has been seen on the sun: smaller solar flares sometimes perturb nearby magnetic loops and tip them over the edge to snap and produce a larger flare. But perhaps the most important question is how common the newly observed phenomenon is. For now, Ilin wants to focus on finding more systems where planets induce stellar flares that scientists can study. 'Once we figure out how it works, we can turn it into a planet-detection technique,' she says. Instead of searching for the planets themselves, researchers could look for stars that flare following a certain pattern—suggesting they, too, might have planets with a self-destructive bent.
Forbes
25-06-2025
- Science
- Forbes
SKA Radio Array To Spot Habitable Exoearths Via Their Magnetic Auroras
Two people admiring the green light of Aurora Borealis standing on the wild Skagsanden beach, ... More Lofoten Islands, Norway Radio astronomy has long been unsung and underappreciated, largely because it's never been able to cough up the kind of jaw-dropping visual images that are routine with large optical telescopes. But that could all change when the 1-billion-euro Square Kilometre Array Observatory comes online in Western Australia and South Africa in 2027. The SKAO was primarily funded to unravel the mysteries of dark energy, the evolution of galaxies through cosmic time and to further constrain Einstein's theory of relativity. But at least one Netherlands-based radio astronomer is using that country's know-how in the low-frequency radio spectrum to look for emissions from far flung earthlike extrasolar planets. We really need all the sensitivity SKA-Low can get us as this will be a very faint signal of around a 100 MHz, Joe Callingham, Head of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Science Group at ASTRON, The Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, tells me in his office at the University of Amsterdam. That's basically the same frequency as the FM dial on your car radio. If you ever go hunting for auroras in Norway or Antarctica, you want the Sun to be pumping out radiation, preferably a coronal mass ejection that hits our atmosphere and causes those big, beautiful lights, Callingham tells me. But if you could turn your eyes into radio receivers, they'd also be incredibly bright in the low frequency spectrum, he says. Like a shield, Earth's geomagnetic field protects us from solar activity, so we really think having a geomagnetic field is super important for habitability, says Callingham. And without a geomagnetic field, even if astronomers find an earthlike planet in the habitable zone of a nearby red dwarf star, these M-type red dwarfs pump coronal mass ejections daily. So, most likely, you've got a barren rock sitting in a Goldilocks habitable zone, says Callingham. Because without a magnetic field a planet will lose its atmosphere, and its oceans will be boiled away, he says. So, we really think the magnetic field is vital piece of this puzzle, and radio is the only real way to detect and measure that, says Callingham. Remote Desert Location From a remote site in Western Australia, SKA-Low's antennas are divided into 512 stations, with 256 antennas per station, notes SKAO. From a central compact core measuring 1km across, with a maximum distance of 74 km between the two furthest stations, they note. How does it work? SKA-Low is a "mathematical" telescope that works by filtering out what is not desired from the observable sky, says the SKAO. Its antennas see the whole sky, and through data processing astronomers can "point" in different directions even though the antennas have no moving parts, SKAO notes. As for what the SKAO will bring to the data processing table? The big thing that's changed is professionalization of the software; we've hired software engineers to really help us because it's very computationally expensive radio astronomy, says Callingham. But Callingham and colleagues already have lots of experience in the low frequency regime since The Netherlands has built and has been operating their LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR) since 2010. A Great Legacy Radio astronomy in The Netherlands has a very long tradition dating back to World War II and we've capitalized on that expertise, says Callingham. Without the algorithms we've developed here and the engineering skills we've built over time in The Netherlands, the SKA wouldn't be possible, he says. A Planet Hunter This radio method will also be a new way to discover exoplanets, says Callingham. M-type red dwarfs are the best spectral type to survey for these auroras since they host largest number of nearby planets (and have strong magnetic fields), he says. The Bottom Line? The SKA is going to revolutionize our understanding of the universe, largely because it's going to have a sensitivity and the resolution that's unparalleled by any other radio telescope that has ever been built, says Callingham. And I think it will find the first auroras on other planets outside of our solar system, he says.
