It is the youngest exoplanet discovered by the planetary transits method and it is only 330 light years from the solar system. You 1227 B continues to shrink, eroded by X -ray storms of its turbulent host star.
We will soon celebrate the 30th anniversary of the discovery by the Swiss Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the first exoplanet around a star on the main sequence. And yet, even after all these years and although more than 7,550 of them are known to the noosphere in the Milky Way and recorded by the famous site of theEncyclopedia of extrasolar planets, founded in 1995 by theAstronomer Jean tailor From the Paris Observatory, we are not yet, in 2025, only at the beginning of the exploration of the world of exoplanets.
This world interests us particularly because some of them may well have been the birthplace of life forms similar to those we know on our blue planet. The CEA was not mistaken and he devoted to these questions several videos forming a web series, where we are talking about the techniques of detecting exoplanets as well as the models of their atmosphereatmospherein search of biosignatures that could discover a new generation of instruments.
We are especially trying to find potentially habitable rocky exoplanets, with an atmosphere, in the hope of soon discovering biosignatures. Let us recall, as we had explained several times theastrophysicistastrophysicist Franck Selsis, well known to readers of Futura For his work on exoplanets and in particular the search for biosignatures, that the concepts of habitability and biosignatures precisely do not go without saying and that a great caution is essential on them when one discovers exoplanets which can be “sexy”.
But the exploration of Hot JupiterHot Jupiter Orbitant very close to their host star – as is the case of the first exoplanet discovered by Mayor and Queloz (51 Pegasi B also named Dimidium) – continues because it is part of the general strategy to understand the exoplanets and their spectral signatures.
The methods of detecting exoplanets have been largely diversified since the 1990s. They can rank in two main categories, direct methods and indirect methods. The three main methods are the direct imaging method, the indirect transit method and the indirect radial speed method. © CEA Research
Exoplanet detection methods
Recall that there are two main techniques to discover exoplanets, that of transits and that of speedsspeeds radial. The first provides the orbital periodorbital period of an exoplanet and its radius, but not directly its massemasseand it only allows you to discover exoplanets making transits around their host star. The second is effective, without transit, and it also gives the orbital period as well as the presence of several exoplanets with constraints on their masses and eccentricitieseccentricities of the orbitsorbits.
When the two methods are possible, not only a measure of mass is obtained, but also of the density of the exoplanet, which informs us about its nature. Is it a rocky planetrocky planeta sparkling giant or even a Ocean planetOcean planet ?
Quite recently, the NasaNasa drew attention to a press release, which a free access article on arXivon the exoplanet you 1227 B, which orbits around a Woman RougeWoman Rouge About 330 light yearslight years of the earth. As its name suggests, it is one of the TESS Objects of Interest (You), that is to say one of the AstresAstres fallen into the nets of the NASA mission of Transiting Exoplanet Survey SatelliteTransiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (Tess) chasing transits of exoplanets.
But the NASA press release reports today about you 1227 B in the field of X -raysX -rays and with a telescopetelescope in orbit now mythical: ChandraChandra.
An entire terrestrial atmosphere lost every 200 years!
You 1227 b orbit within a fifth of the distance between MercureMercure and the SoleilSoleil From his red dwarf type M. The two are very young since their estimated age is around 8 million years old, making you 1227 B the second youngest exoplanet discovered by the transit method.
It now appears with Chandra that explosions of anger typical of a young red dwarf produce powerful waves of X -rays, capable of significantly eroding the atmosphere of exoplanet to the point that in about a billion years it will have lost about two earthly masses. It is estimated that it contains about 17 currently, but there are uncertainties.
On the other hand, we know that the radius of you 1227 B is about three times that of NeptuneNeptunetherefore almost that of Jupiter. X -ray evaporation models of the exoplanet also suggest that it loses a mass equivalent to the whole earth’s atmosphere approximately every 200 years.
« It is almost unimaginable to imagine what happens to this planet. The atmosphere of the planet simply cannot bear the high dose of X -rays it receives from its star », he stated in the statement of Nasa Attila Varga, PhD. Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) of New York, which led the study.