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Showing results for tags 'holy crap why do i find the most horrific things'.
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EPIC 203533312 is a large F-Type main sequence star about 1,440 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius. Over the summer, I stumbled across its previously discovered candidate planet on Exoplanet Explorers. The results were absolutely horrifying. This freak of nature, nicknamed Kraken, appeared to be a 3.1 Earth radius planet orbiting every 4.2 HOURS. Yes, you read that right. The calculated equilibrium temperature for Kraken is nearly 5,100oK, or around 8,800 degrees Fahrenheit!!! That's as hot a some G-type stars! However, it now seems more likely that Kraken is, in fact, a second star to the system. Believe it or not, that's WORSE than it being the physical embodiment of Hell. Why? To get the signal seen in the K2 data for EPIC 203533312, Kraken would have to be another large star (estimated around 1.5 solar radii) in an 8.4-hour orbit that just grazes the disk of the primary. This is incredibly problematic, as the two stars will likely be close to - if not - touching. A similar system is the binary W Ursae Majoris, which consists of two Sun-like stars that touch and are now shaped like a giant Space Peanut of Death. However, EPIC 203533312 and Kraken are even closer together due to their significantly larger radii. What makes this system even scarier is when you compare it to KIC 9832227. If anybody remembers, this was a pair of G-type stars of 1.58 and 0.83 solar radii in a contact binary system with orbits lasting just 11 hours and will likely merge into a Red Nova in the early 2020's. Both of KIC 9832227's stars are significantly further apart than EPIC 203533312 and Kraken, which makes it quite likely that the latter two can merge within the next few decades - or maybe even within the next few weeks! I honestly don't know. I'm not good when it comes to binary systems, and this system is just so unusual and so dangerous that it's very hard to get a clear picture of its future. Any planets in this system probably only have a handful of years (in cosmic standards) before being incinerated. But how bad can a Red Nova even be? The most famous Red Nova star, V838 Monocerotis, was probably once a large blue star that appears to have merged with another star or a very large planet. It suffered an incredible outburst, quickly increasing to 1,200-1,500 times the size of the Sun with over one million times the luminosity, but with a temperature similar to L-class brown dwarfs. The burst was powerful enough to be seen from Earth, around 20,000 light years away. Any planets in this system were likely destroyed or sterilized by the rapid expansion and sudden, dramatic increase in luminosity. While EPIC 203533312 and Kraken likely won't produce something as powerful, V838 Monocerotis proves how potentially dangerous these two stars are. It's absolutely frightening how a pair of stars is about to be completely destroyed and wipe out any planets in its vicinity within a human timescale. I would rank this, hands-down, as one of the most DANGEROUS systems you could ever visit in the entire Universe.