PHOENIX – Scientists have discovered the universe’s largest known planet, a giant ball made of mostly hydrogen that is 20 times larger than Earth and circling a star 1,400 light-years away.
Scientists believe the planet – called TrES-4 – is 1.7 times the diameter of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, and has a temperature of 2,300-degrees.
“There is probably not a really firm surface anywhere on the planet. You would sink into it,” said Georgi Mandushev, a research scientist at Lowell Observatory and lead author of an article announcing the finding in the peer-reviewed Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Scientists “can’t understand why these so-called fluffy planets are so fluffy. It really is a mystery, just how they can be so low-density,” astronomer Alan Boss at the Carnegie Institution of Washington said.
Lowell Observatory, along with the California Institute of Technology’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County and telescopes operating in Spain’s Canary Islands, discovered the planet circling a star in the constellation Hercules.
Lowell announced the finding Monday. Scientists first spotted the new planet, TrES-4, and a smaller one in spring 2006. Scientists also are working on the possibility of another planet in the same constellation.
Lowell Observatory is best known for the 1930 discovery of Pluto, which recently has been demoted from planet status.
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