Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to An exoplanet with a 1 year long orbit around a red giant!

This might be an interesting place to visit.

A highly-evolved 10 solar mass star must have cooked its surroundings pretty well during its lifetime. A Jupiter-sized planet might well be a remnant of a much larger world, a gas giant or a brown dwarf with its volatiles boiled off by its primary star during its expansion phase. We might be looking at the solid core of a massive Jovian world, devoid of its atmosphere. Can a solid planet this massive even exist? Or would it still be a gas giant?

Either way, we'd better hurry and go take a look. A 10-solar mass giant is a supernova candidate.

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