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Question
I just found out about this new suicidal planet, and I heard that this new planet causes an odd effect on the sun. If this planet crashes into the sun will it hurt the sun? AND Will this newly found suicidal planet hurt Earth?
These two questions are from readers who both seem to have missed the essential point that the “suicidal planet” in the news is not part of our solar system. The discovery of this giant planet (ten times the mass of Jupiter) was reported in August. The planet is called WASP 18b, and the star it orbits is WASP 18a. This planet orbits so close the the star and generates such strong tidal interactions that its orbit will shrink until it plunges into the star, perhaps about a million years from now. It has nothing to do with our solar system, or our Sun, or the planet Earth. Yet some people are frightened of it. I will add “suicidal planets” to the growing list of supposedly scary astronomical phenomena that people write to me about, along with black holes, gamma ray bursts, the dark rift, the galactic center, the galactic plane, exploding stars, a “photon belt”, alignments of planets or the Sun with each other or with the galactic center, solar activity, solar flares, changes in the solar magnetic field, changes in the Earth’s magnetic field, Nibiru, Apophis, Eris, etc. There is no reason to be frightened of these things or of the cosmos generally!
David Morrison
NAI Senior Scientist
September 28, 2009
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