Alien ‘Super-Jupiter’ Breaks the Mold on Where Planets Can Exist

An undated artist's impression shows a close-up of the planet b Centauri (AB)b, which orbits a binary system with mass up to 10 times that of the Sun roughly 325 light years from Earth. The planet orbits the two-star system at 100 times the distance Jupiter orbits the sun. European Southern Observatory/L. Calcada/Handout via REUTERS
An undated artist's impression shows a close-up of the planet b Centauri (AB)b, which orbits a binary system with mass up to 10 times that of the Sun roughly 325 light years from Earth. The planet orbits the two-star system at 100 times the distance Jupiter orbits the sun. European Southern Observatory/L. Calcada/Handout via REUTERS
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Alien ‘Super-Jupiter’ Breaks the Mold on Where Planets Can Exist

An undated artist's impression shows a close-up of the planet b Centauri (AB)b, which orbits a binary system with mass up to 10 times that of the Sun roughly 325 light years from Earth. The planet orbits the two-star system at 100 times the distance Jupiter orbits the sun. European Southern Observatory/L. Calcada/Handout via REUTERS
An undated artist's impression shows a close-up of the planet b Centauri (AB)b, which orbits a binary system with mass up to 10 times that of the Sun roughly 325 light years from Earth. The planet orbits the two-star system at 100 times the distance Jupiter orbits the sun. European Southern Observatory/L. Calcada/Handout via REUTERS

One of the largest planets ever detected orbits at an enormous distance around two stars with a combined mass up to 10 times greater than our sun, an extreme celestial family that shatters assumptions about the type of places where planets can exist.

The planet, located about 325 light years from Earth, is a gas giant apparently similar in composition to Jupiter but about 11 times more massive, researchers said on Wednesday. It belongs to a planetary class called "super-Jupiters" exceeding the mass of our solar system's largest planet.

It orbits a pair of stars gravitationally bound to one another, called a binary system. It has what might be the widest orbit of any known planet - about 100 times wider than Jupiter's orbit around our sun and about 560 times wider than Earth's.

Until now, no planet had been found orbiting a star more than three times the sun's mass. Stars larger than that emit so much radiation that they were thought to torch the planetary formation process. This discovery dashes that view.

"Planet formation appears to be an incredibly diverse process. It has surpassed our imagination many times in the past, and will probably keep doing so in the future," said astronomer Markus Janson of Stockholm University in Sweden, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature, Reuters reported.

Since the discovery in the 1990s of the first planets beyond our solar system - so-called exoplanets - scientists have sought to learn whether or not our solar system represents standard "architecture."

"From the trend seen so far, our solar system is not the most common type of planetary system architecture that exists," said study co-author Gayathri Viswanath, a Stockholm University astronomy doctoral student.

"For instance, there are planetary systems with so-called 'hot Jupiters' where massive Jupiter-size planets orbit their host stars at a very close distance. A vast majority of the discovered planets also seem to have a size between that of Earth and Neptune, a size range in which our solar system has no planets," Viswanath said.

The larger of the tandem stars in the b Centauri system in which the newly discovered planet resides has a mass around five to six times that of the sun and is more than three times hotter, unleashing large amounts of ultraviolet and X-ray radiation.

It is a so-called B-type star, a category of extremely luminous blue stars. It is quite young in cosmic terms, at around 15 million years old. In comparison, the sun is roughly 4.5 billion years old.

Less is known about the smaller of the tandem. It is estimated at anywhere from one-tenth to four times the sun's mass. The two stars orbit relatively close to one another, within about the distance of the Earth from the sun. They can be seen with the naked eye from Earth in the constellation Centaurus.

The European Southern Observatory's Chile-based Very Large Telescope captured an image of the planet, named b Centauri (AB)b. Like Jupiter, it is believed to be comprised mostly of hydrogen and helium.

Scientists had doubted that stars larger than three times the sun's mass could host planets because they would present an unfriendly environment for planetary formation.

Planets form from material coming together inside huge disks of swirling gas and dust surrounding newborn stars. Big stars, it was thought, give off so much high-energy radiation that this material might be evaporated. The newly identified planet coalesced so far from its stars that it may have avoided this cauldron.

"The distance from the stars probably matters a lot, at least it did when the planet formed," Janson said.



Marseille Airport Suspends Flights Due to Wildfire as Public Warned to Stay at Home

 Smoke rises over Marseille as a fast-moving wildfire spreads on the outskirts the city, southern France, July 8, 2025. (Reuters)
Smoke rises over Marseille as a fast-moving wildfire spreads on the outskirts the city, southern France, July 8, 2025. (Reuters)
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Marseille Airport Suspends Flights Due to Wildfire as Public Warned to Stay at Home

 Smoke rises over Marseille as a fast-moving wildfire spreads on the outskirts the city, southern France, July 8, 2025. (Reuters)
Smoke rises over Marseille as a fast-moving wildfire spreads on the outskirts the city, southern France, July 8, 2025. (Reuters)

A wildfire spurred by hot summer winds reached France's second-largest city Tuesday, grounding all flights to and from Marseille, injuring at least nine people and forcing many residents to evacuate or barricade themselves indoors as smoke choked the Mediterranean air.

A big city hospital switched to generator power, train traffic was halted in most of the surrounding area, and some roads were closed and others tangled with logjams.

More than 1,000 firefighters were deployed to tackle the fire, which broke out near the town of Les Pennes-Mirabeau before racing toward Marseille. Some 720 hectares (acres) were hit by the blaze, the prefecture said.

Nine firefighters were injured, according to the prefecture, or local administration. No dead have been reported.

The prefecture said in a statement Tuesday evening that “the situation is under control,″ though the fire has not yet been extinguished. It described the fire as “particularly virulent.″

It came on a cloudless, windy day after a lengthy heat wave around Europe left the area parched and at heightened risk for wildfires. Several have broken out in southern France in recent days.

Light gray smoke gave the sky over Marseille’s old port a dusty aspect as water-dropping planes tried to extinguish the fire in the outskirts of the city, which has some 900,000 inhabitants.

Hundreds of homes were evacuated. The prefecture urged people in the affected areas to stay indoors and off the roads. With the fire approaching Marseille, the prefecture also advised residents in the north of the city to keep windows closed to prevent toxic smoke from entering their homes.

One distressed family watched the smoke over their neighborhood in the hills above the port city and showed AP how the roof of their neighbor's house had been damaged in the fire as they worried about their own.

Marseille airport announced that the runway had been closed at around midday. The prefecture said train traffic was halted, notably after a fire neared the tracks in L'Estaque, a picturesque neighborhood of Marseille.

As a safety measure, the city's Hospital Nord switched to generators “due to micro power cuts.”

“The aim is to secure the imaging sector. We are not worried as we have a high level of autonomy,” the University Hospitals of Marseille said, adding that because of the disrupted traffic it asked workers to remain at their posts until the next teams starts its shift.