A planet 39 times huge than the earth is sighted orbiting the distant star located 730 light-years away from Earth at very high speed, and with astronomers determining that it might be the surviving core of an ill-fated planet once perhaps larger than Jupiter- the largest planet in our Solar system that was removed of its gaseous atmosphere.

The planet is called TOI-849b is the largest rocky planet ever discovered and it orbits the star 10 times more rapidly than Earth orbiting the Sun, completing an orbit every 18 hours.

Researchers told that it is the largest rocky planet ever found and in addition to it will provide a great chance to explore interior gas giant like Jupiter the largest planet in our solar system since it would be the first planetary core ever discovered.

“This planet could have been a gas giant like Jupiter, which then lost its outer envelope through some violent evolution. This could be because it collided with another planet towards the end of its formation, or later ventured too close to its host star and was stripped of its atmosphere,” said astronomer David Armstrong of the University of Warwick in England, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature.

He further put back by saying that “An alternative is that the planet got stuck while forming, building up a core but failing to collect the gas we would normally expect”.

The team of researchers has explored that the planet called TOI-849b is orbiting around a star little smaller and cooler than the sun and planet has a diameter of 43,500 less than than the planet Neptune having diameter 49,244 km, of the smallest of four gas planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune but larger than our earth having diameter 12,742 km.

The gas planet consists of a solid core enveloped by a vast atmosphere consisting of mainly hydrogen and helium with a relatively small rocky core and with tracks of water, methane, ammonia, and other hydrogen compounds. Since there is no well-defined surface we can’t land on the gas giant planets. Since the atmosphere gets deeper and deeper as we move toward the core of gas giant planets like Jupiter. Since the rocky planet like Earth and Mars have a simply defined difference between atmosphere and surface but has gas giant does not have well-defined surface. That’s why the exploration of these gas giant planets are difficult.

This planet will provide a great opportunity to explore the interior of the gas giant planets. Since we know that the gas planets are much more than just the gas.

The planet “TOI-849b itself is much more enormous than we expect even gas giant planetary cores to be,” Armstrong said, “and this might imply a new planet formation or evolution pathway which we don’t yet understand.”

Further, they added the planet TOI-849b orbits a star which is 730 light-years away from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year nearly about 9.5 trillion km. It’s is much closer to the star than the mercury distance from Sun.