December 21, 2017

Artist's concept of the planet GJ 436b with its tail (Image courtesy Mark Garlick/University of Warwick)

An article published in the journal “Nature” describes a research on the planet GJ 436b, whose orbit around its star turned out to be almost polar instead of equatorial. A team of researchers led by the University of Geneva (UNIGE)Switzerland, discovered this strange new characteristic of this exoplanet’s orbit, already known because its orbit is very eccentric and above all because it has a huge tail similar to a comet’s.