Earth-Like Planets with Giant 'Wrecking Ball' Neighbors Can Host Life After All
Earth-Like Planets with Giant 'Wrecking Ball' Neighbors Can Host Life After All
By Charles Q. Choi 15 hours ago
A comparison between the brightness of the giant planet in HR 5183 at closest approach compared with Venus.
(Image: © Teo Mocnik)
A giant planet wildly careening around a star may not prevent an Earth-size planet from staying in a stable orbit friendly to life as we know it, a new study finds.
The view from such an Earth-like planet as its gigantic neighbor zooms past would prove unlike anything we might see here, shining as bright as the brightest supernova ever seen in recorded history, researchers said.
Scientists investigated a sun-like yellow dwarf star named HR 5183, located about 103 light-years away in the constellation Virgo. Earlier this year, astronomers discovered the star possessed a giant planet named HR 5183b more than 3.2 times the mass of Jupiter in a highly oval or "eccentric" orbit around it.
"One of the most surprising aspects of exoplanet discoveries over the past several decades has been the discovery of giant planets in eccentric orbits like a comet, since the planets of our solar system are on almost circular orbits," study lead author Stephen Kane, a planetary astrophysicist at the University of California at Riverside, told Space.com.
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