We have a new exoplanet, a hot Neptune

NASA announced on November 26 the discovery of a hot Neptune and it is in a close orbit to its star, this hot Neptune is called TOI-3261 b and it is so close to its star that the year on this planet lasts only 21 hours . The discovery was made by an international team of scientists using the TESS space telescope and later reaffirmed it because using ground telescopes in Australia, Chile and South Africa, the TESS is a space telescope specialized in searching for these planets by the transit method, that is, because they pass in front of its star, and since it is so close it is easy to detect it. This planet also seems to have a very complex history. It has been calculated that both the star and the planet are about 6,500 million years old, that is, they are older than the Earth and the sun, and it is also believed that this planet began its life being a much larger gas giant, perhaps the size of Jupiter, but either because it moved towards its star or was already very close to its star at its birth, it lost its gases over time.

The researchers say that the process is by photoevaporation, which is when the energy of the Star causes the gas particles to dissipate, and also by tidal shedding, which is when the force of gravity of the Star tears off entire layers of Gas from the planet, to this we would also have to add the Stellar winds and the eruptions that the star has had. With such a narrow orbit and this type of Neptunians, only three of this type of hot Neptunes have been found near the star. They are very rare because they end up losing their gases. Being so close to the Star they end up completely dry due to the action of the radiation of the Star, the stellar winds, the gravity that removes the gases from that planet, they end up dry and end up leaving only its rocky core, therefore, it has been discovered that it is evolving to transform into a su Pertierra. The super-Earths are more abundant, super-Earths are rocky planets like ours, like the Earth, but larger, being so close to them, their star could end up being a planet with oceans of lava, because it receives a lot of heat, although another option is that at losing its atmosphere also obviously loses mass and with this perhaps it could move away from its star and be placed in a more temperate area, in which case it could evolve into a desert planet similar to that of the science fiction Dune, right now the planet TOI-3261 b It turns out to be an ideal candidate for testing new computer models of planetary formation.