Astronomers have announced that they have discovered a massive planet orbiting a small star. This is a strange combination that has puzzled scientists.

Most stars in the Milky Way are small red dwarfs like TOI-6894, which is only 20% of the mass of our Sun.

It was not thought possible for such small, weak stars to provide the necessary conditions for the formation and acceptance of massive planets.

However, an international team of astronomers has discovered the unmistakable trace of a gas giant planet orbiting the small TOI-6894, according to a study in the journal Nature Astronomy.

This makes the star the smallest known star to host a gas giant, AFP reported.

The planet has a radius slightly larger than Saturn's, but only half its mass. It orbits its star in just over three days.

Astronomers discovered the planet while searching more than 91,000 low-mass red dwarfs observed by NASA's TESS space telescope.

Its existence was then confirmed by ground-based telescopes, including the Very Large Telescope in Chile.

“The fact that this star hosts a giant planet has major implications for the total number of giant planets we think exist in our galaxy,” said study co-author Daniel Bayliss of the University of Warwick in the UK.

Another co-author, Vincent Van Eilen from University College London, emphasized that this is an “intriguing discovery.”

“We don't understand how a star with such a low mass can form such a massive planet!” said Van Eilen.

“This is one of the goals of the search for more exoplanets. By discovering planetary systems different from our own solar system, we can test our models and better understand how our own solar system formed,” he explained. | BGNES