As we discover more worlds orbiting distant stars, we are finding that "conventional thinking" doesn't seem to apply to the growing menagerie of exoplanets. And this most recent exoplanetary discovery is no different.
In fact, the two exoplanets found to be orbiting a star 375 light-years away shouldn't exist at all.
The two gas giant planets were spotted during a survey of "metal poor" stars. When focusing on a star called HIP 11952, researchers from the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, discovered a slight wobble in the star's position.
The wobble is being caused by the gravitational tug of two exoplanets -- one is nearly the size of Jupiter and orbits the star every seven days, the other is approximately three-times the size of Jupiter and has an orbital period of 290 days.
Read More: http://news.discovery.com/space/most-ancient-impossible-alien-worlds-discovered-120327.html
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