Free Republic

An enormous alien planet — one that is 11 times more massive than Jupiter — was discovered in the most distant orbit yet found around a single parent star. The newfound exoplanet, dubbed HD 106906 b, dwarfs any planetary body in the solar system, and circles its star at a distance that is 650 times the average distance between the Earth and the sun. The existence of such a massive and distantly orbiting planet raises new questions about how these bizarre worlds are formed, the researchers said. "This system is especially fascinating because no model of either planet or star...

The planet, according to a study published online Thursday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, is unlike anything in our own solar system. Eleven times more massive than Jupiter, planet HD 106906 b orbits a single sun-like star at a distance of 60 billion miles - about 650 times the distance Earth is from our own sun. "This system is especially fascinating because no model of either planet or star formation fully explains what we see," said study coauthor Vanessa Bailey, an astronomy graduate student at the University of Arizona.