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Podcasting for the first time from our sound studio in CollabSpace, Ottawa, Canada.

Our sensors are picking up a new planet, 920 light years away is orbiting a star in what’s called a 'Neptunian Desert'. This is an area of space so close to a star that if were the size of Neptune with all that beautiful blue super-thick atmosphere, would simply have it all blown away by its parent star.

Enter NGTS-4b, three times bigger than Earth, so close to it’s star, it takes 1.3 days to orbit, atmosphere intact, not possible, forbidden. Beach weather here a 1,000 degrees Celsius on this planet.

How can it exist? One idea is that it’s core is a super heavyweight, with gravity itself keeping a hold on the atmosphere. Whatever the reason for this forbidden planet to exist, it may be stretching what we previously thought were limits of planet formation.

This is also a first from Earth. The transition method used to detect such a small signal, of a forbidden planet. If we can find one, we can find more.

Maybe Neptunian Deserts are wetter than we thought.

This episode of Deep Space Drones was sponsored by

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