00:03Out in the far reaches of the cosmos, celestial objects are constantly in flux, and a recently discovered planet, named
00:10HD207496b, is changing drastically.
00:14The planet is only around 138 light-years away, outrageously close when talking about the vastness of space.
00:20And experts now say not only might it have a gaseous atmosphere and an ocean that stretches across its entire
00:26surface, it might also be shrinking down to a habitable size.
00:30Our understanding of planets in our own size range is pretty limited, but what we do know is that planets
00:34that are smaller than Earth rarely, if ever, have atmospheres.
00:38Astronomers aren't exactly sure why, but they believe the planets with less mass than Earth have difficulties hanging on to
00:43their own atmosphere, instead getting siphoned away by their host stars.
00:46And while HD207496b is currently around 6.1 times the mass of Earth, it's far less dense.
00:52Earth has a density of 5.51 grams per cubic centimeter, meanwhile the exoplanet in question is only 3.27
00:59grams per cubic centimeter.
01:01They say this means it likely has a significant amount of water and or gas in its composition, and its
01:05star is slowly tearing a lot of that away.
01:08Experts predict that in 520 million years, it will gobble up the whole planet, but it's still quite young, meaning
01:13it's giving scientists a front row look at how young planets evolve, and in this case, how they eventually die.
01:19See you next time.
01:19Bye.
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