Massive Exoplanet Discovered, Challenges Established Planet Formation Theories

sfcrazy writes "A giant exoplanet that is in the most distant orbit ever seen around its host star, has been recently discovered. Dubbed HD 106906 b, the newly discovered planet is relatively young (13 million years old, compare this to our 4.5 billion years old Earth) and bigger than any other planet discovered till date. It is 11 times the size of Jupiter, and that's what makes it a most singular discovery."

Comments

Re:Can someone who knows about astronomy fill me i

[Virtucon]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-do-scientists-determi

Re:Upper limit on planets? Lower limit on stars

[Zephyn]

That's the mass threshold for deuterium fusion. No fusion = planet, deuterium fusion = brown dwarf, hydrogen fusion = main sequence star.

So at 11 Jovian masses, the planet is close, but not quite big enough to reach brown dwarf status.

headline isn't quite correct

[The Bad Astronomer]

The headline as submitted isn't really correct. The planet is not the biggest found; there are several whose mass may be larger, like the exoplanets announced just last week (and this planet has 11 times the mass of Jupiter; we don't know its actual size). The real issue with HD 106906 b is that it is so far out from its parent star, much farther out than planets with that ass should form. Either it formed farther in and got tossed out (which is unlikely) or it formed where it was, which current theories say is difficult; usually objects forming that far out have much higher mass. I explain all this in my own blog post about it.