The disintegrating exoplanet K2-22b
Exoplanet surveys have yielded many surprises over the years, and the discovery of “disintegrating” exoplanets was one of them. These are planets that produce asymmetric shapes in the dips of the light curves seen as they transit across the faces of their stars. The asymmetry is hypothesized to be due to tails of dusty material from the planets’ disintegration. At present, only three such planets known around main sequence stars, one being K2-22b. There are currently over 3800 confirmed exoplanets, suggesting either that such objects are intrinsically rare or that they have very short lifetimes, in which case it is lucky to catch any in the act of disintegration. These systems have been under intense study to better understand their formation and evolution and to constrain the properties of the grains in the dust tails.
phys.org
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2019-01-21
