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Researchers have found two new exoplanet contestants that orbiting a star approximately 300 light-years from the Earth and early signs suggest that this distant solar system harbours a black, stormy history. The star in interrogation, named HIP 68468, is what is named as solar twin, meaning it is same as to our own Sun in terms of composition, temperature and age. But HIP 68468 appears to have destroyed and consumed one of the worlds that once revolve in its orbit, thank you to certain tell-tale marks left behind at this (unproven) cosmic offense act. A worldwide astronomer’s team at the University of São Paulo in Brazil commanded by Jorge Melendez studied HIP 68468 operating the (3.6 m) telescope in Chile at the La Silla Observatory and identified two new planet applicants in the orbit around it.
One of these HIP 68468c is a ‘Super Neptune’, means an astronomical object that is huge than the planet Neptune. In this case, HIP 68468c has a mass about 26-times Earth's mass and about 50% larger than that of Neptune. The other new planet applicant HIP 68468b is a ‘Super Earth’, which means this is a planet with greater mass than Earth's, but lesser in mass than Neptune and Uranus. What is prominent about HIP 68468b is that it is the first ‘Super Earth’ researchers have discovered which has three times the mass of Earth and orbiting a solar twin. But you know how they say 'two is company and three is a crowd'? That seems to be the case with HIP 68468, as a nearer look at the star proposes at least one more planet alongside HIP 68468c and HIP 68468b used to orbit HIP 68468.
When the team analyzed the star's structure, they discovered 4-times more lithium than they estimated for a star of its age 6 billion years, along with proof of a extra of stubborn elements heat resistant metals that are plentiful in stony planets. If you doubt obscene play in distant space might have happened here, you are not the only one person. "It can be very difficult to know the history of a specific star, but once in a while we get fortunate and find stars composed chemically," said by astronomer ‘Debra Fischer’ from the Yale University, not involved in the research. "That is the case with HIP 68468. The chemical leftovers of one or more planets are dirty in its atmosphere." While the indication of a planet-falling into a star and being basically eaten up by it might be appear strange, the phenomenon could be more common than we consider.
The scientists are now watching more than 60 solar twins and they also predict about 15% of these Sun looks alike and contain extra quantity of lithium. Melendez said that “This proposes that about 15% of stars like the Sun must have consumed planets.” Researchers think our own Solar System could go the same way in sufficient time too, with predictions that the Sun will swallow the Venus, Mercury, and possibly even Earth in approximate a billion years. If this happens, it might not even be the first time our Sun has swallowed a world. Investigation published earlier this year proposes our Solar System might have once contained a ‘Super Earth’ of its own but this world, if it existed, may have fallen into the Sun after drifting too close. At HIP 68468, it is possible that the star might be about to become a repeat criminal, as both of its living planets are already in very close-fitting orbits around it, having transferred inwards from where they would have formed long ago and much more out. The ‘Super Earth’ in particular, HIP 68468b, must to be concerned.
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