WASP-12b may disappear in only 10 million years (Illustration: ESA/C Carreau)
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’s 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’s gravity, which stirs up the planet’s interior, generating heat that expands its gases (Nature,
