Aviation+

Meet “Death” Star

If you thought the summer heat wave was the worst thing a star could send your way, think again. 3 years ago a star located 880 light years away named CoRoT-2a was discovered by the French Space Agency’s Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits (CoRoT) satellite, along with its planet, CoRoT-2b. Sources say the satellite had a tough childhood, everyone constantly picked on its name. Anyways, it was recently discovered that the planet, which has a mass three times that of Jupiter, is having 500 million tons of its matter evaporated EVERY SECOND due to high-energy radiation from its parent star, or Death Star as fanboys like to call it. The fact that the star keeps the planet only 3% of the distance between us and the Sun doesn’t help, as the planet may be speeding up the star’s rotation and keeping its magnetic fields active. This overprotective parent star is blasting CoRoT-2b with a hundred times the x-rays we get from our sun, one could say the force is strong with this one. “I wish our sun would hit US with that many rays”, says Jersey Shore’s Pauly D, who is always looking for ways to keep up his tan.