Astronomers have identified seven planets orbiting a star in our Milky Way galaxy that suffer from radiant energy emanating from their star even more violent than the planet Mercury in our solar system, reports Reuters, cited by Agerpres.

In our solar system, the small and rocky planet Mercury orbits closest to the Sun, constantly being “fried” by its radiation, seven times more intense than those we experience on Earth.

But based on data from NASA’s decommissioned Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have identified seven planets larger than Earth in the Kepler-385 system, the largest of the four rocky planets in our solar system.

All of them have closer orbits to the star Kepler-385 compared to the average distance between Mercury and the Sun.

“These planets are ‘frying’ more than any other planet in our solar system,” said astronomer Jack Lissauer of NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, lead author of the study, which will be published in the Journal of Planetary Science and published on research site arXiv.

It is the second largest group of planets discovered to date orbiting a star outside our solar system.

Astronomers continue the hunt for exoplanets

So far, scientists have identified more than 5,500 exoplanets—planets outside our solar system—and have observed hundreds of stars with multiple exoplanets. But the group of seven exoplanets around Kepler-385 is surpassed only by eight known orbiting a star called Kepler-90.

Another star, TRAPPIST-1, is known to have seven such planets. There are eight planets in our solar system.

The Kepler space telescope, NASA’s first “planet hunter,” was decommissioned in 2018. He discovered exoplanets by observing the small dips in brightness of a star as the planet passed through it. right.

The new study catalogs approximately 4,400 planets spotted by the telescope between its launch in 2009 and its decommissioning. Scientists continue to analyze the data obtained during that period, as evidenced by the identification of a group of exoplanets around Kepler-385.

The study shows that there are many different types of planetary systems – many of which are likely very different from our own solar system. Systems with more than eight planets almost certainly exist, but so far telescopes have been unable to detect smaller exoplanets.

What we know about the new planets discovered in the Kepler-385 system

The star Kepler-385 has a diameter and mass about 10% larger than our Sun, but at the same time it is brighter and slightly hotter. It is approximately 5000 light years from Earth. A light year means the distance that light travels in one year, which is 9.5 trillion kilometers.

The smallest of the seven planets – 20% larger than Earth – orbits closest to Kepler-385, at a distance of just over 4% of our planet’s distance from the Sun. The next planet is about 20% larger than the nearest planet.

“Both are likely rocky and rotate synchronously, always with the same face facing the star, as the Moon and Earth do,” Lissauer said.

“This makes them especially hot near the point closest to the star. But since any atmosphere is likely long gone, their hemispheres facing away from the star are always dark and extremely cold,” Jack Lissauer said.

“Fried” planets do not give hope for the discovery of life

Most of the other planets in the group are about 2.4 times larger than Earth.

“They all probably have dense atmospheres and are hot all over the surface, which may be well below their clouds,” Lissauer said.

“The outer planet orbits at about 40% of the Earth-Sun distance. The distance is slightly smaller than the average distance between the Sun and Mercury,” the researcher added.

In the search for life beyond Earth, these planets are not promising candidates.

“The chances of life on any of these seven planets are really very slim,” Lissauer said, but added that “it’s entirely possible that there are other planets orbiting at greater distances from the star that we don’t know about.” , as they are more difficult to detect.”

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