In a distant star system, astronomers have discovered a planet with a hard surface like Earth, but with a mass 17 times larger, earning it the name “Godzilla of Earths”.
In response to the discovery of Kepler-10c, which orbits a star around 560 light years from Earth using the Nasa’s Kepler telescope, astronomers have created a new class of planet known as a “mega-Earth”.
The planet was discovered by looking for dips in light recorded from its parent star as it passes between the star and Earth, with Kepler-10c found to have a diameter of around twice that of Earth at 29,000km. However, its huge mass was determined by examining the body’s gravitational pull on its host star using the Harps-North instrument on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo in the Canary Islands.
At a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Boston, Prof Dimitar Sasselov, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told reporters that while mega-Earth may be the agreed name for a body larger than a super-Earth, he’d used the term “Godzilla of Earths”.
