The first ever mega earth,a gigantic super planet with a diameter in excess of 18,000 miles. ie. 2.3 times as large as Earth has now been discovered. It is called the “Godzilla of Earths.”
Astronomers have announced that they have discovered a new type of planet – a rocky world weighing 17 times as much as Earth.
Kepler-10c (as it has been named) circles a sun like star once every 45 days. It is located about 560 light-years from Earth in the constellation Draco.
Theorists believed such a world couldn’t form because anything so huge would absorb hydrogen gas as it grew and become a Jupiter-like gas giant.
This planet, though, is all solid and much bigger than previously discovered super-Earths, making it a mega-Earth.
“We were very surprised when we realized what we had found,” says astronomer Xavier Dumusque of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
“This is the Godzilla of Earths” adds CfA researcher Dimitar Sasselov, director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative. “But unlike the movie monster, Kepler-10c has positive implications for life”.
Its sheer size puts it in the category of planets known as mini-Neptunes which have thick, gaseous envelopes.
Kepler-10c was originally spotted by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft.
