An exoplanet, who is doomed to fail, is caught around his star in a "death spiral". Can it survive?

A massive planet that is trapped in a death spiral around his star could unlock some of the secrets that surround the star systems. However, the fate of this world has not yet been carved into stone, with two deaths and a “rebirth” in their future.

The extrasolar planet or “exoplanet” is toi-21109b, which has the five-time mass of Jupiter and is about 870 light years away from our solar system. The planet buys so close to its parent star Toi-21109 that it has a year that only lasts 16 hours.

These characteristics mean that TOI-219B is classified as “ultrahot Jupiter”, a rare planet class that makes up around 1 out of 500 planets in the over 5,000 worlds in the catalog known. But TOI-2109B is also noticeable under these incredibly hot, star-built worlds.

“This is an ultra-Hot-Jupiter and circles his star much closer than any other hot Jupiter,” said Jaime A. Alvarado-Montes in a statement.

“For a huge gas giant like TOI-21109B, which circles completely in 16 hours, we say that it is a planet that is located over his star.”

This makes TOI-219B the perfect laboratory to examine the death screens of planets in their host stars or more precisely the phenomenon of the orbital drop.

The three deaths of toi-219b

Alvarado-Montes and colleagues set out to investigate the TOI-2109B using archive data from several telescopes, including the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (Tess) and the European Space Agency (ESA) Mission Cheops.

This formed data on the transits from Toi-219b on the face of his overarching star from 2010 to 2024.

“With all the data available for this planet, we were able to predict a small change in its orbit,” said Alvarado-Montes. “Then we verified it with our theory and with our planets, and our predictions have matched the observations. That is pretty exciting.”

The right theoretical estimates and observation evidence indicated that the orbit of TOI-219B will expire by about 10 seconds over the next three years. Although this is a tiny change, it proves that TOI-2109B plays to his parent star.

The ultimate fate of TOI-219B is uncertain because there are three possible options for how this spiral of death could affect.

An illustration shows the tidal forces of a star that tears apart a planet. (Photo credit: Robert Lea (created with Canva)))

The first and dramatic finale of TOI-219B would immerse yourself in its overarching star. This happens when the orbital decline begins to accelerate this planet.

“The star will of course absorb and kill him, which completely burns, and the planet will disappear,” said Alvarado-Montes.

This would create a flash of light that is similar to the ZTF SLRN-2020, a signal that was first observed in May 2020 when a gas giant planet was overridden in its red giant star.

An illustration of a yellow ball that looks slightly blurry with a dark brown, swollen ring.

An illustration shows a red giant star with a ring around him, which was created when he swallowed a gas -giant planet. (Photo credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/Ralf Crawford (STSCI))

The second possible fate of TOI-219B is a little less dramatic, but no less catastrophic.

This would happen if the planet's orbital decline continues unabated and the severity of his parent star creates destructive tides within the planet. These forces would literally tear toi-2109b.

“The gravitational interactions are so strong that the planet is distorted,” said Alvarado-Montes. “It looks more like an elongated donut … The heavy of the planet can no longer hold its spherical shape.”

There is a third possible fate in which the planet is changed rather than destroyed.

A large orange ball next to a smaller brown ball, which is surrounded with white smoke

An illustration of a gas giant planet that turns into a rocky planet is stripped off its atmosphere. (Photo credit: Robert Lea (created with Canva)))

In the third possible scenario for TOI-219B, the intensive radiation that the Ultrahot Jupiter experiences grazes the gas-based outer layers of the planet in a process that is referred to as photo evaporation. This would uncover the rocky inner core of toi-2109b.

“If the planet gets closer to the star, all gas molecules could be dissociated and the planet is getting smaller,” said Alvarado-Montes. “And if the planet shrinks quickly enough, when the planet reaches the position in which its Roche border would have been, it will no longer be five Jupiter masses, but it will be small enough that the Roche border comes closer to the star so that it could escape the destruction.”

Ultimately, this could lead to the creation of a rocky “Super-Earth” around the size of Uranus or Neptune.

The team will continue to monitor TOI-21109B in the next three to five years, which should reveal fate that corresponds to the world, who is doomed to fail.

The examination of TOI-219B has an impact on its own fascinating and fateful situation. It offers the astronomers the opportunity to examine how their hot Jupiter develops and what happens when planets hike to their host stars.

“This planet and its interesting situation could help us to find out some mysterious astronomical phenomena that we really have really not explained many evidence to,” concludes Alvarado-Montes. “It could tell us the story of many other solar systems.”

The team's research was published on Tuesday (July 15) in the Astrophysical Journal.

topicnews · July 18, 2025

An exoplanet, who is doomed to fail, is caught around his star in a “death spiral”. Can it survive?

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