TOI-4860b is a fairly nearby planet in another star system located just 260 light-years away. It’s also quite strange. It’s a gas giant around the size of Saturn, but orbits a star only one-third the size of the Sun.
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00:00TOI-4860b is a fairly nearby planet in another star system, located just 260 light years
00:11away.
00:12But it's also quite strange.
00:13It's a gas giant around the size of Saturn, but orbits a star only one-third the size
00:18of the Sun.
00:19And it orbits that star at such a speed and proximity, it only takes the planet 1.52 days
00:24to rip around the star.
00:26And that's what's baffling astronomers.
00:27They have no idea how a planet could form in this way.
00:30That's because stars form when extremely dense cosmic clouds of debris accrete, spinning
00:34and coming together to feed the hungry fusion reaction that takes place.
00:38The leftovers then become planets.
00:39However, the smaller the star, the less leftovers.
00:42Meaning scientists don't really know how a star so small could have enough leftover
00:46material in its disk to create a gas giant of such a magnitude.
00:50And TOI-4860b isn't alone.
00:53They've found others that meet the same bizarre planet formation theory bending sizes.
00:57The best explanations are that gravitational interactions may have brought the planets
01:01closer to their stars, while others suggest that heavier elements now discovered in the
01:05system could be to blame for the weird, and physics-breaking, situations.