Does The Discovery Of This Planet Break Our Theory of Planet Formation?

Amaze Lab

TOI-4860b is a fairly nearby planet in another star system located just 260 light-years away. It’s also quite strange. It’s a gas giant around the size of Saturn, but orbits a star only one-third the size of the Sun.

Transcript

00:00TOI-4860b is a fairly nearby planet in another star system, located just 260 light years

00:11away.

00:12But it's also quite strange.

00:13It's a gas giant around the size of Saturn, but orbits a star only one-third the size

00:18of the Sun.

00:19And it orbits that star at such a speed and proximity, it only takes the planet 1.52 days

00:24to rip around the star.

00:26And that's what's baffling astronomers.

00:27They have no idea how a planet could form in this way.

00:30That's because stars form when extremely dense cosmic clouds of debris accrete, spinning

00:34and coming together to feed the hungry fusion reaction that takes place.

00:38The leftovers then become planets.

00:39However, the smaller the star, the less leftovers.

00:42Meaning scientists don't really know how a star so small could have enough leftover

00:46material in its disk to create a gas giant of such a magnitude.

00:50And TOI-4860b isn't alone.

00:53They've found others that meet the same bizarre planet formation theory bending sizes.

00:57The best explanations are that gravitational interactions may have brought the planets

01:01closer to their stars, while others suggest that heavier elements now discovered in the

01:05system could be to blame for the weird, and physics-breaking, situations.

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