There’s a planet 140 light years from Earth that is rapidly disappearing right before astronomers’ eyes. An immense amount of intense heat is to blame.
Although the planet is about the size of Mercury, its orbit is about 20 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our sun. Its year passes in about 30.5 of our hours, they report in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Astronomers suspect the planet’s proximity has raised its temperature to about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and rendered its surface in magma that is boiling off into space. As the hot planet orbits, it throws of a massive amount of surface minerals, which evaporate into space. To the astronomers observing it, the planet looks like a huge comet with a long tail of debris. That tail stretches nearly 6 million miles long, encircling about half the planet’s entire orbit.
