UNC student discovers new planet

CHAPEL HILL—Madison Barber, a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has made a groundbreaking discovery in astronomy.

During his studies of young transit systems, Barber discovered an extremely young planet.

This discovery was made using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.

According to ABC11, the planet called TIDAY-1bhe was barely three million years old.

This fact makes it the youngest transiting planetary system ever recorded.

“That’s about the same as a 10-day-old baby on the human time scale,” Barber explained. ABC11

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By comparison, the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and took 10 to 20 million years to form. This discovery allows scientists to study an early and poorly understood stage of planet formation.

Planet TIDYE-1b orbits a star of the same age, IRAS 04125+2902, located 522 light-years away.

The system has unique characteristics: the outer protoplanetary disk surrounding the star is displaced, and the inner disk is depleted. Nature.

These conditions allowed researchers to directly observe the protoplanet in transit, ABC 11 reported.

Barber detailed in an interview that the planet Its orbital period is 8.83 days.the radius is 10.7 times the radius of Earth and approximately 30% of the mass of Jupiter.

The discovery of TIDYE-1b has important implications.

Predecessors of super-Earths or sub-Neptunian planets.

Barber explained that such systems could be precursors to super-Earths or sub-Neptunian planets and could help astronomers better understand how planets form and evolve.

“Because we don’t know about many of these young systems on the way, it’s critical to look further to better understand how our own home came to be,” Barber said. ABC11.

Interestingly, this is not the first planet discovered by Barber.

“This is my third planet discovery, but it is by far the most important because it is the youngest transit system,” he said.

“Looking at the Universe gives us a broader view of our place in it, where we came from and where we can go,” he concluded.

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