In a groundbreaking discovery, a team of astronomers has identified a planet orbiting an ultracool dwarf star known as LHS 3154. This planet, named LHS 3154b, is over 13 times the mass of Earth and is the largest planet ever found closely orbiting an ultracool dwarf star.
The discovery challenges existing models of planet formation, as current theories propose that planets originate from the remnants of gas and dust left after star formation. However, the planet-forming disk around LHS 3154 is not anticipated to possess sufficient solid mass to generate a planet as massive as LHS 3154b.
This raises questions about the origin of the planet, as the dust mass and dust-to-gas ratio in the disk surrounding stars like LHS 3154 would need to be ten times higher than observed to birth a planet of LHS 3154b’s magnitude. This implies the existence of other, unknown processes that can lead to the development of massive planets around low-mass stars.
The planet was identified using the Habitable Zone Planet Finder (HPF), an astronomical spectrograph designed to detect planets with potentially liquid water orbiting the coolest stars beyond our solar system. The lower temperatures of ultracool stars allow liquid-carrying planets to orbit much closer than our Sun would allow for Earth, making interactions between the star and planet more accessible for scientists to observe and confirm the presence of these distant worlds.
Megan Delamer, a co-author of the study, expressed excitement about the discovery, stating that the object is likely extremely rare and that current theories of planet formation have trouble accounting for what has been observed. This groundbreaking find sheds new light on planet formation and opens up new avenues for further research in the field of astronomy.
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