A doomed alien planet discovered has a year lasting just 16 hours – getting fast

Posted by Kapil on December 2nd, 2021

Record-Breaking Short Year Planet

Astronomers have discovered a new gas giant with the shortest known orbit, breaking yet another record. The world revolves around its star in just 16 hours, yet the dance may come to a stop one day.

The newly discovered exoplanet belongs to a class of objects known as “hot Jupiters” by scientists. These worlds are created similarly to the titans of our solar system, but orbit much closer to their stars, thus the name. Although astronomers have discovered over 400 hot Jupiters to date, researchers claim that none compare to the current find, which has been given the designation TOI-2109b.

“Everything pointed to it being a planet,” said Avi Shporer. “We recognized we had something highly unique and rather rare.” According to a release, he is an exoplanet scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a co-author of the new findings.

Shporer and his colleagues discovered the planet in data collected by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which has orbited Earth since April 2018.

Because TESS glances at one region of the sky for nearly a month before moving on, it’s tailored to find planets that orbit their stars relatively swiftly. TESS doesn’t observe planets directly; instead, it looks for modest, rhythmic brightness dips that indicate a planet approaching the telescope.