Researchers have discovered an exoplanet that travels around its small, red star backward, much like a rubber duck spinning against the current in a whirlpool. The discovery could give insight about how exoplanets form around the most common types of stars in our galaxy.
It's a mystery why the alien world, called GJ 3090 b, orbits its star backward (also called a retrograde orbit). Stars and planets usually form from the same rotating disk of gas and dust, called a protoplanetary disk. Newly formed celestial objects normally rotate in the same direction as the protoplanetary disk, because changing the rotational direction requires a lot of energy applied in the right way.
Astronomers have discovered a few exoplanets with retrograde orbits before; these orbits often happen when the gravitational attraction of other massive objects in their star systems scrambles the planets' orbits. However, this newly discovered planetary system doesn't seem to have any massive objects that could have changed the retrograde planet's orbit, researchers reported in a study published Sept. 21 in the journal Read Entire Article
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