'Hot Jupiter' torn apart by erupting young star, scientists say

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- A planet that scientists called a "hot Jupiter" is causing trouble for its solar neighbor.

Labeled HIP 67522 b by scientists, this planet is 415 light-years from Earth. It is one of just a few discovered planets that is less than 100 million years old.

In a recent study conducted by the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON), scientists discovered that the planet, which orbits very close to its star, is shrinking.

The planet is just a tad smaller than Jupiter and completes its orbit in just seven days. Scientists believe that because of its size and tight orbit, it is causing its star to freak out.

The star is emitting giant solar flares, no danger to us here on Earth, that are actually tearing away chunks of the planet.

Ekaterina Ilin, an astrophysicist at ASTRON, spoke to the Associated Press about what's happened.

"What we observe in that very young, very close in planet is that it moves through the magnetic field of the star and perturbs it," Ilin said. "So it sort of whips up a wave that can travel, because it's so close to its star, it can travel to the star and trigger big explosions within that magnetic field. And what's very fascinating about that is just that it basically means that the planet is in a way roasting itself, you could say."

The researchers used data from the European Space Agency's CHEOPS telescope and NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to observe solar interaction. They published their findings in this month's issue of Nature.

According to NASA, the star that the planet orbits is also young and prone to solar flares.

"What will happen long term to that planet long term is that it will lose most of its atmosphere over what in cosmic terms is very short, only a few hundred million years. So in a way it causes its own doom," Ilin said.

According to NASA, the constant damage to the planet's atmosphere could shrink it to the size of Neptune.

The scientist team now plans to take this discovery and use it to find similar interactions throughout the cosmos.

"This is really the first time we see it so clearly. And it is very surprising because it is a hundred times at least stronger than what theory predicts. So we now really need to take into account this type of interaction if we want to know what happens to the atmospheres of planets around any young star," Ilin said.