Giant planet found far from its star
Publisher's note: I'm always fascinated by the cosmos, and this is an amazing find. According to the story, a massive planet that is 11 times the size of Jupiter is orbiting it's sun from a mind boggling distance...60.5 Billion miles. To put that in perspective, Jupiter is roughly 11 times larger than Earth, and the distance between us and our star, the sun is around 93 million miles. Additionally, Pluto is 'only' about 3.6 Billilon miles from the sun.
Another way to look at the distance might be in dollars; this planet is about 8 days of wasteful government spending/borrowing away in miles.
Fox News: An enormous alien planet — one that is 11 times more massive than Jupiter — was discovered in the most distant orbit yet found around a single parent star.
The newfound exoplanet, dubbed HD 106906 b, dwarfs any planetary body in the solar system, and circles its star at a distance that is 650 times the average distance between the Earth and the sun. The existence of such a massive and distantly orbiting planet raises new questions about how these bizarre worlds are formed, the researchers said.
"This system is especially fascinating because no model of either planet or star formation fully explains what we see," study lead researcher Vanessa Bailey, a fifth-year graduate student in the University of Arizona's department of astronomy, said in a statement.