Exoplanets that get too close to their parent stars experience harsh conditionsNazarii_Neshcherenskyi/Shutterstock
A distant Earth-sized planet is orbiting so close to its parent star that gravity is stretching it to an extreme degree, turning it egg-shaped.
A handful of known exoplanets are extremely close to their parent stars, which exposes them to incredibly harsh conditions. These “ultra-short period” planets – they take less than a day to complete one loop around their stars – are blasted with radiation and often have surfaces composed entirely of lava.
Now, Fei Dai at the University of Hawaiʻi and his colleagues have discovered…
Hellish conditions have warped an Earth-like planet into an egg
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