NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered a massive and dense exoplanet that challenges our current understanding of planetary formation.
The exoplanet, named TOI-4603b, has a mass of nearly 13 Jupiters and a radius of 1.042 times that of Jupiter. It revolves around a star 730 light-years away in a 7.25-day orbit. According to Akanksha Khandelwal of the Physical Research Laboratory in India, “It is one of the most massive and densest transiting giant planets known to date.”
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The team of astronomers led by Khandelwal was able to decode the mass of TOI-4603b using radial velocity measurements, which are likely to be 12.89 times that of Jupiter. Astronomers believe that a planet’s mass is theoretically limited, and the team hypothesizes that it belongs to a particular category of planets whose formation and evolution are still unknown to astronomers.
The team notes that TOI-4603b could be on a line between brown dwarfs and planets, which may shape our understanding of the formation of brown dwarfs and giant planets.
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The research paper states, “It is a valuable addition to the population of less than five massive close-in giant planets in the high-mass planet and low-mass brown dwarf overlapping region that is further required for understanding the processes responsible for their formation.”
The discovery of TOI-4603b by TESS provides valuable insights into the diversity of cosmic objects in our universe and challenges our current understanding of planetary formation.
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As the hunt for exoplanets continues, millions of yet-to-be-discovered objects are waiting to be found and studied.
The results of the research paper are available on the preprint server arXiv.