![]() The distance is key for the survival of the planet, scientists said. As a result, its surface is far too hot to support life as we know it. It moves around the star system in an orbit 100 times greater than the distance of Jupiter from the sun, according to the news release. The planet orbits extremely close to its host star Alpha Centauri B, completing one lap every 3.2 days. The newly found planet is one of the biggest ever discovered. “B-type stars are generally considered as quite destructive and dangerous environments, so it was believed that it should be exceedingly difficult to form large planets around them,” Janson said. Scientists once believed planets could not exist around stars this massive and hot until this discovery. It was believed the hotter the star, the more radiation it produces, causing material that help planets form to evaporate. ![]() ![]() Heat coming from massive stars have a strong impact on gases, which typically work against planet formation. The larger star belonging to b Centauri – a B-type star – is three times hotter than the sun, scientists said, and it unleashes a large amount of ultraviolet and X-ray radiation. “Finding a planet around b Centauri was very exciting since it completely changes the picture about massive stars as planet hosts,” said Markus Janson, an astronomer at Stockholm University in Sweden and an author of the study.
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