Out in the far reaches of the cosmos celestial objects are constantly in flux and a recently discovered planet named HD-207496b is changing drastically.
00:00Out in the far reaches of the cosmos, celestial objects are constantly in flux, and a recently discovered planet, named HD207496b, is changing drastically.
00:14The planet is only around 138 light-years away, outrageously close when talking about the vastness of space.
00:20And experts now say not only might it have a gaseous atmosphere and an ocean that stretches across its entire surface, it might also be shrinking down to a habitable size.
00:29Our understanding of planets in our own size range is pretty limited, but what we do know is that planets that are smaller than Earth rarely, if ever, have atmospheres.
00:37Astronomers aren't exactly sure why, but they believe that planets with less mass than Earth have difficulties hanging on to their own atmosphere, instead getting siphoned away by their host stars.
00:46And while HD207496b is currently around 6.1 times the mass of Earth, it's far less dense.
00:52Earth has a density of 5.51 grams per cubic centimeter, meanwhile the exoplanet in question is only 3.27 grams per cubic centimeter.
01:00They say this means it likely has a significant amount of water and or gas in its composition, and its star is slowly tearing a lot of that away.
01:07Experts predict that in 520 million years, it will gobble up the whole planet, but it's still quite young, meaning it's giving scientists a front row look at how young planets evolve, and in this case, how they eventually die.
