When it comes to super-Earth planets, you cannot get any bigger than heavyweight world HD 69830b. Roughly 10 times more massive than our home planet, this rocky world is arguably the largest exoplanet in super-Earth flavour that has so far been uncovered in our high-tech hunt for alien worlds around distant stars.
Orbiting its 41 light-year distant orange dwarf star, HD 69830, which rests in the constellation of Puppis, the large super-Earth is on a tight orbit which it can complete in nearly nine days.
HD 69830b was uncovered by a team of scientists led by veteran exoplanet hunter Christophe Lovis back in May 2006, using the European Southern Observatory’s HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) spectrograph on the 3.6 metre La Sila telescope in the Atacama desert in Chile. The scientists also noticed that it is not alone around its star.
Behind it in much more distant orbits are its larger companions, two collosal gas giants, HD 69830c and HD 69830d which weigh in at around 12 and nearly 19 Earth-masses respectively.
Due to its proximity to its star and the fact that it is out of its habitable zone – the distance from a star where it is possible for water to exist – chances of there being life on this super-Earth are really rather slim. But what if we were able to somehow move HD 69830b to a distance where conditions were just right? According to experts, super-Earths are not just scaled-up versions of their prototype, our planet, they’re often presumed to be hostile worlds. Our home hosts a well defined core, mantle and crust, believed to have formed within its first 50 million years, through which heat is transported from the cooling core to the crust before bursting out into volcanoes. Additionally this convection of heat drives the plate tectonics that are crucial for recycling carbon and keeping an ideal climate.
Due to tidal heating within its interior, planet hunters believe that HD 69830b could throw out heat which would dwarf that outputted by Jupiter’s volcanic moon, Io, by at least 20 times. Could this super-Earth harbour the jagged forms of volcanoes on its surface like Jupiter’s companion or Venus? It is certainly possible but at the current time with current technology we unfortunately cannot say for sure.
HD 69830b Specs
- Size: 10 times that of Earth
- Distance from Earth: 41 light years
- Type: Super-Earth
- Most like: Earth x 10