NGTS-10b: Discovery of a Doomed Planet

Explanation: This hot jupiter is doomed. Hot jupiters are giant planets like Jupiter that orbit much closer to their parent stars than Mercury does to our Sun . But some hot jupiters are more extreme than others. NGTS-10b, illustrated generically , is the closest and fastest-orbiting giant planet yet discovered, circling its home star in only 18 hours. NGTS-10b is a little larger than Jupiter , but it orbits less than two times the diameter of its parent star away from the star's surface. When a planet orbits this close, it is expected to spiral inward , pulled down by tidal forces to be eventually ripped apart by the star's gravity. NGTS-10b , discovered by researchers at the University of Warwick , is named after the Next Generation Transit Survey , which detected the imperiled planet when it passed in front of its star, blocking some of the light. Although the violent demise of NGTS-10b will happen eventually, we don't yet know when.