Welcome to the latest installment of “Writer Fuel – cool real-world stories that might inspire your little writer heart. Check out our Writer Fuel page on the LimFic blog for more inspiration. Today:
Astronomers have broken yet another record, spotting a new gas giant with the shortest known orbit. The world takes just 16 hours to circle its star — but someday, the dance may come to an abrupt end.
The newly announced exoplanet belongs to a category scientists refer to as “hot Jupiters.” These worlds are built more or less like our solar system’s behemoth, but orbit much closer to their stars, hence the nickname. Although astronomers have identified more than 400 hot Jupiters to date, researchers say none are quite like the new discovery, which is designated TOI-2109b.
“Everything was consistent with it being a planet, and we realized we had something very interesting and relatively rare,” Avi Shporer, an exoplanet scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and co-author on the new research, said in a statement.
