Star Devours Its Own Planet

[n2doc]

The star is squeezing a planet 40 percent larger than Jupiter into the shape of a football.

Wed Feb 24, 2010 11:47 AM ET | content provided by AFP

Like the Roman god Saturn who ate his own children, a star 600 light-years from Earth is slowly gobbling up one of its own planets, according to a study released on Wednesday in Nature, the British science journal.

The planet, whose discovery was reported last year, is a "gas giant" with a mass about 40 percent greater than that of Jupiter, the biggest planet of our Solar System, and with a radius 79 percent bigger.

But whereas Jupiter takes nearly 12 years to plod around the Sun, it takes WASP-12b a mere 26 hours to race around its star, WASP-12, located in the constellation of Auriga.

more:

http://news.discovery.com/space/star-gravitational-exoplanet.html

[Bill McBlueState]

1. "Like the Roman god Saturn who ate his own children"

Sometimes journalists' attempts to write colorful science stories can be annoying, but that one's pretty good.

[hobbit709]

2. Or Cronus

[mindwalker_i]

3. BITE ME! (n/t)