A JUPITER-LIKE exoplanet is being fattened up by its star, which looks set to devour it.
Discovered in 2008, WASP-12b is a gas giant that is 1.4 times as massive as Jupiter, but is puffed up to about 1.8 times Jupiter鈥檚 size. It orbits the host star in 26 hours.
Shu-lin Li of the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Beijing, China, and colleagues say that this bloat is caused by the star鈥檚 gravity, which stirs up the planet鈥檚 interior, generating heat that expands its gases (Nature, ).
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WASP-12b鈥檚 bloated state means it can barely hold onto its outer atmosphere. This should allow the star to steal matter from the planet, consuming it completely in about 10 million years, the team estimates. 鈥淭his may sound like a long time, but for astronomers it鈥檚 nothing,鈥� says Li. Earth has been around for more than 4.5 billion years.
