Living on earth, mankind is lucky and all life on it because we're not destined for a fiery doom, as the sun burns all its hydrogen in 5 billion years. Much similar to the process of the red giant Betelgeuse, one exoplanet called WASP-12b is not so fortunate. Found in the Auriga star system, it is slated to die in 3 million stellar years.
A study made by astrophysicists at Princeton reported about the impending death of the WASP-12b. As it hurtles in a gravitational spiral into a sun, the spectacular destruction it is destined to end with will leave planetary debris in its wake. This paper was forwarded to The Astrophysical Journal Letters as another study on exoplanets to add to the body of knowledge about.
This planet is a hot Jupiter, a gas giant similar to Jupiter in the solar system's back yard. But, it is falling closer to its local sun, when planets get too close they burn. WASP 12-b just takes about 26 hours to orbit, its sun compared to 365 days for Earth to do so that is very fast. Another is Mercury that takes only 88 days to orbit the sun, but not as fast.
One of the premises that got shattered about the longevity of hot Jupiters, is how WASP 12-b is going to die because of several factors. For example, gravitation can pull any planet inward, and this is true for all planets. It usually takes a long time for most planets to spiral, discovering this is something else to watch out for. Information like this gives scientists more information to base more learned guesses, which is based on actual astronomical findings.
As two bodies, a planet and its star, play the cosmic dance of gravitational influence which is normal in the universe. This is comparable to the Earth and moon as the tides go high and low, according to gravitational influence. Gravitational waves become more intense due to the interaction, with a large stellar body especially. Gravity begins to warp and flux not in the usual manner, and cause severe changes in the star-like raising its temperature.
Gravity waves will crash and begin to affect the star caused by changes in gravitation. As the star soaks up the extra energy generated by the planet's failing orbit, it heats up like a furnace. It gets more interesting as the altered gravity, causes WASP 12-b to spin faster towards the sun for its eventual demise.
More discoveries of this kind will help Astro-scientists understand how the phenomenon works in the universe, with more examples. Catching a gas-giant like WASP12-b is a rarity that helps understand it in real-time, not after the event. More data has been gotten from the Spitzer Telescope and anomalies were more evident, leading to the conclusion.
As exoplanet WASP 12-breached the terminal orbital decay, it gives an idea of how gas giants die. As more information is collated on exoplanets that give scientists more leeway to predict outcomes with such a phenomenon.
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