London, July 26 : A team of European scientists working with COROT (Convection Rotation and planetary Transits) has discovered an exoplanet that seems to have a surprisingly powerful influence on its parent star, forcing the star to rotate at exactly the same rate as it orbits.
The planet’s day is also the same length, so the pair are fixed in a face-to-face whirl.
According to a report in New Scientist, the puzzle is how this planet, called COROT-Exo-4b, could have so dominated the vastly larger star, which is bigger than our Sun.
The new planet was discovered by the European COROT satellite, launched in 2006, which searches for transits – the telltale dimming of stars caused by planets passing in front of them.