Whether it’s an ex, a friend, a child, or a coworker — we’ve all experienced a clingy person in our lives. They revolve around you like a planet to a star, demanding your energy and slowly draining the life out of both of you. And as it turns out, that comparison might be more fact than simile.
For the first time, astronomers have observed an exoplanet orbiting close enough to its host star to trigger flares of radiation. The new study, published in Nature, describes the clingy planet, HIP 67522 b, as having a death wish, as its wispy mass is slowly deteriorating thanks to its proximity to the star.
“The planet seems to be triggering particularly energetic flares,” said Ekaterina Ilin, from the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, in a press release. “The waves it sends along the star’s magnetic field lines kick off flares at specific moments. But ...
