Godzilla, the planet that shouldn't exist
Kepler-10c, nicknamed Godzilla, is a confirmed exoplanet orbiting the star Kepler-10, a Sun-like yellow dwarf in the constellation Dragon.
A monstrous planet. A rocky body seventeen times heavier than Earth, named Kepler-10c. A physical aberration, according to scientists.
Astronomers are scrambling to observe space through the eye of the Kepler Space Telescope .
Thanks to it, they can now observe the megaplanet Kepler-10c in the constellation of the Dragon, located 560 light years from Earth. There, it orbits a star similar to our Sun, albeit twice as old.
Scientists began by determining the mass of this compact planet, dubbed Godzilla, to be 17 times that of Earth. Deduction of astronomers, according to current knowledge in astrophysics: Kepler-10c is a rocky body, like our planet.
However, twice as large as the Earth, this megaplanet should be gaseous! Like Saturn, for example, and all the other known giants of this magnitude.
Planets are born from a mass of gas and dust around an embryonic star. The larger they grow, the more gas they attract and absorb. A star as imposing as Kepler-10c should therefore have transformed into a gas giant, like Jupiter.
Problem: astronomers have not detected any trace of gas in the atmosphere of Kepler-10c!
“ It is difficult to admit the existence of this planet. It challenges our knowledge of astrophysics. How to conceive the reality of a planet which would not even have agglomerated small quantities of hydrogen and helium? asks Dimitar Sasselov, an astronomer at Harvard.
The existence of this megaplanet blurs the certainties of scientists on the formation of planets. Kepler-10c could be the first of a new kind of giant rocky bodies.
This planet is therefore a celestial object of a new type. Composed mostly of heavy elements with a mass well above the limit predicted by models of 10-12 Earth masses from which accretion of a large amount of gas should occur, Godzilla continues to puzzle astronomers.
The mystery of its formation fascinates as much as it questions. Because according to known astronomical models, an object like Godzilla should simply not exist. If it exists, however, the models must then be reinvented.
Source : websites