BREAKING: A Disintegrating Planet with a Comet-like Tail

MIT astronomers have discovered a planet some 140 light-years from Earth that's crumbling to pieces. This world is about the mass of our sun's innermost planet Mercury, but circles about 20 times closer to its star than Mercury does to our sun. It's so close to its star that magma on its surface is thought to be boiling off into space. This planet is evaporating away. The surface minerals it’s shedding are flowing behind the planet, extending halfway around its orbit, similar to a long comet tail. Join EarthSky’s Deborah Byrd as she gets the scoop from the study’s author, Marc Hon of MIT, at 12:15 p.m. CDT (17:15 UTC) today.

For more information: https://earthsky.org/space/disintegra...

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