The existence of “Hot Jupiters” is one of the oldest mysteries of the era of exoplanet hunting, but a European spacecraft is revealing some clues about how these enigmatic worlds are formed.
The so-called Hot Jupiters they are planets that are about as massive as Jupiter and orbit very close to their stars, usually less than one-tenth distance at which the Earth revolves around the sun. Hot Jupiters are very different from anything seen in the solar system, and ask questions about their formation.
Now, new data from the European Space Agency Gaia spacecraftwhich tracks more than a billion stars in the Milky Waythey have provided a new insight into the formation, evolution, and relative age of hot Jupiters.
Related: The strange exoplanet “Hot Jupiter” is shaped like a soccer ball
The researchers used Gaia’s measurements of the positions and velocities of objects to determine the relative age of the stars. Combining this information with data on the alignment of hot Jupiters with the rotation of their stars revealed that there are multiple ways in which hot Jupiters form, both fast and slow.
“Without this really accurate method for measuring ages, information was always lacking,” said Jacob Hamer, a doctoral student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University and lead author of a new paper describing the results. statement.
It is believed that hot Jupiters with misaligned orbits with respect to the equator of their stars form late in relation to those that are aligned, such as the planets in our solar system.
“One [formation process] occurs rapidly and produces aligned systems, and [the other] it occurs on longer time scales and produces misaligned systems, ”Hamer said in the statement.
The work has been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal, and a prepress version is available via arXiv database.
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