Exoplanets that are near their star may have been pushed there

By Jason Arunn Murugesu

We may now know why some hot Jupiters have such narrow orbits

Asar Studios / Alamy

The extremely short 10-day orbits of hot Jupiter can be explained by the fact that the planets are born under a high density of stars.

Hot Jupiters have long puzzled astrophysicists. As the name suggests, they are planets similar in size and appearance to Jupiter – but, unlike Jupiter, they are very close to their star, meaning they only take a few days to complete an orbit.

Andrew Winter from Heidelberg University and his colleagues used data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission …