On new lava-filled planet years last for only 8.5 hours

Would you like to wake up to a new year every day? That’s exactly what you can do if you happen to be on an Earth-size fireball of a planet 700 light-years away, which orbits its star in just 8.5 hours. The newly discovered planet, named Kepler 78b, has one of the shortest orbital periods ever detected with a radius that is only about three times the radius of the star.Researchers believe that the planet is about 40 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our sun.

Scientists have estimated that the top layer of the planet is likely completely melted, creating a massive, rolling ocean of lava at temperatures at 2760°C. The star around which Kepler 78b orbits is likely relatively young, as it rotates more than twice as fast as the sun- a sign that the star has not had as much time to slow down.

But what has really excited astronomers is that they were able to detect light emitted by the planet.This is the first time researchers have been able to do so for an exoplanet as small as Kepler 78b, and it could give scientists detailed information about the planet’s surface composition and reflective properties.
Kepler 78b is so close to its star that scientists hope to measure its gravitational influence on the star.

To discover Kepler 78b, the team looked through more than 150,000 stars that were monitored by the Kepler Telescope, a NASA space observatory that surveys a slice of the galaxy. The researchers reported their discovery of Kepler 78b in The Astrophysical Journal.
In a separate paper, the same research team observed KOI 1843.03, a previously discovered exoplanet with an even shorter orbital period: just 4 1/4 hours.

In order for the planet to maintain its extremely tight orbit around its star, it would made almost entirely of iron, otherwise the immense tidal forces from the nearby star would rip the planet to pieces. Though Kepler has now been retired, scientists are still analysing data from it in hopes of identifying habitable, Earth-sized planets

Read more about the discovery and research here.