15-year-old makes epic discovery of new planet
At just 15 years old, Tom Wagg discovered what astronomers only began to find 20 years ago — a planet far from Earth, outside of our solar system.
Wagg is one of the youngest to ever detect a planet, according to a press release from Keele University in England where he was working when he made his epic discovery.
In fact, Wagg's new planet closely resembles some of the very first exoplanets ever identified in the mid '90s that looked completely different from anything astronomers had ever seen and actually spawned a complete revision of how we think planetary systems form today.
The newly-discovered planet falls into a class of exoplanets called hot Jupiter's. These planets are large like Jupiter but, unlike Jupiter, they orbit extremely close to their host star — closer than Earth's distance from the sun.
At such cozy distances, these exoplanets can reach blazing temperatures over 1,000 degrees that are what put the "hot" in hot Jupiter.
Wagg's exoplanet is located in a distant solar system within our home galaxy, the Milky Way, 1000 light years from Earth. It's about the same size as Jupiter, but only takes two days to orbit its star. Jupiter, by comparison, takes 12 Earth years, or 4,272 days to orbit the sun.
If you look at the constellation Hydra in the night sky, you'll be looking in the general direction of the planet's home. Here's a visionary sketch of what Wagg's planet, which has yet to be assigned a name, might look like:
It's the hot Jupiters' combination of size and proximity that makes these types of exoplanets relatively easy to spot with today's powerful telescopes through a common detection technique. This technique, which Wagg used, works by examining the amount of light the exoplanet blocks when it passes between Earth and the host star.
Wagg is now 17 years old and has plans to soon attend college and study physics.
News break - June 12
