Mysterious 'Hot Jupiter' Exoplanets May be Younger Than Once Thought

First Posted: Sep 17, 2015 06:54 AM EDT

Hot Jupiters, which are gas giants that orbit close to their star, largely remain mysterious. Now, though, researchers have aimed at solving this mystery by looking at them at bit more closely. They've found that these planets may only take a few million years to migrate close to their newly formed star.

In our solar system, rocky planets like Earth and Mars can be found near the sun. Gas giants, though, are found further away. That's why researchers were surprised when they found a hot Jupiter orbiting twenty times closer to its host star than the Earth does to the sun.

Since then, astronomers have shown that these future "hot Jupiters" form in the outer regions of the protoplanetary disc, which is the cloud of dust and gas from which the central star and its surrounding planets are born. Then, the hot Jupiters migrate inwards, getting close to their host star and heating up.

But what causes these hot Jupiters to migrate? In order to find out, the researchers observed stars in formation in a stellar nursery in the constellation Taurus, located 450 light-years from Earth. One of these stars, named V830 Tau, exhibited signatures similar to those caused by a planet 1.4 times more massive than Jupiter, but orbiting 15 times closer to its star. This suggests that hot Jupiters may be extremely young and far more frequently found around stars in formation than around mature stars.

The findings reveal a bit more about how hot Jupiters form. With that said, the researchers hope to gather more data to validate the signal of the hot Jupiter and possibly look for other examples in the future.

The findings are published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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TagsJupiter, Exoplanets, Planet Formation, Planet, Gas Giant, Solar System, Sun, star, Stars