Image: Shutterstock
Would you like to supersize that solar system? A fourth giant planet has been discovered by an international team of astronomers, in a distant planetary system that resembles a giant version of our own.
According to Dr Benjamin Zuckerman, of the University of California- Los Angeles , the two system not only both have four giant planets (in our case Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune), but also each contain two debris belts. These are both are made up of small icy or rocky objects, like our asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune.
The new planet, known as HR 8799e, was discovered orbiting the bright star HR 8799, located 129 light years beyond our own galaxy. The mass of this system is estimated to be 20 times greater than ours, with all four planets estimated to have a mass between five and seven times that of Jupiter.
The four giant planets are exerting a gravitational pull on each other and researchers aren’t sure if this system will last for billions of years or maybe fall apart in a few million. Astronomers will be following the planets for the next few decades, in the hope of discovering how stable their orbits are.
The system is already posing some challenges, such as determining the origin of the four planets. This is puzzling scientists as they don’t appear to fit into the two main models of formation.
The system may also contain rocky, Earth-like inner planets closer to the star, but, according to Zuckerman, these will be harder to detect.
Source: Science Daily
