Artist’s impression of a BEASTie. The image shows a gas giant planet (like Jupiter) on a distant orbit around a blue, massive star. The planet is likely to have been captured or stolen from another star. The background stars are members of the same star-forming region and could be the star the BEASTie was born around. Credit: Mark Garlick
Researchers at the University of Sheffield have proposed a new origin for
University of Sheffield researchers have presented a new explanation for the newly found B-star Exoplanet Abundance STudy (BEAST) planets. These are Jupiter-like planets that are located far from massive stars—hundreds of times further than the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
Until recently, their development has been a mystery, since massive stars generate large amounts of ultraviolet radiation, which prevents planets from expanding to the size of Jupiter, our solar system’s largest planet.
Dr. Emma Daffern-Powell, co-author of the study, from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Physics and Astronomy states, “Our previous research has shown that in stellar nurseries stars can steal planets from other stars, or capture what we call ‘free-floating’ planets. We know that massive stars have more influence in these nurseries than Sun-like stars, and we found that these massive stars can capture or steal planets – which we call ‘BEASTies’.”
She adds, “Essentially, this is a planetary heist. We used computer simulations to show that the theft or capture of these BEASTies occurs on average once in the first 10 million years of the evolution of a star-forming region.”
Dr. Richard Parker, a lecturer in astrophysics in the University of Sheffield’s Department of Physics and Astronomy explains: “The BEAST planets are a new addition to the myriad of exoplanetary systems, which display incredible diversity, from planetary systems around Sun-like stars that are very different to our Solar System to planets orbiting evolved or dead stars The BEAST collaboration has discovered at least two super-Jovian planets orbiting massive stars. Whilst planets can form around massive stars, it is hard to envisage gas giant planets like Jupiter and
The research was conducted by Dr. Richard Parker and Dr. Emma Daffern-Powell at the University of Sheffield and is part of a larger research program that aims to establish how common planetary systems like our own are in the context of the many thousands of other planetary systems in the