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Burst of Star Formation Drives Bubble in Galaxy's Core
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By NASA
Artist’s concept of the star HIP 67522 with a flare erupting toward an orbiting planet, HIP 67522 b. A second planet, HIP 67522 c, is shown in the background. Janine Fohlmeister, Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam The Discovery
A giant planet some 400 light-years away, HIP 67522 b, orbits its parent star so tightly that it appears to cause frequent flares from the star’s surface, heating and inflating the planet’s atmosphere.
Key Facts
On planet Earth, “space weather” caused by solar flares might disrupt radio communications, or even damage satellites. But Earth’s atmosphere protects us from truly harmful effects, and we orbit the Sun at a respectable distance, out of reach of the flares themselves.
Not so for planet HIP 67522 b. A gas giant in a young star system – just 17 million years old – the planet takes only seven days to complete one orbit around its star. A “year,” in other words, lasts barely as long as a week on Earth. That places the planet perilously close to the star. Worse, the star is of a type known to flare – especially in their youth.
In this case, the proximity of the planet appears to result in fairly frequent flaring.
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The star and the planet form a powerful but likely a destructive bond. In a manner not yet fully understood, the planet hooks into the star’s magnetic field, triggering flares on the star’s surface; the flares whiplash energy back to the planet. Combined with other high-energy radiation from the star, the flare-induced heating appears to have increased the already steep inflation of the planet’s atmosphere, giving HIP 67522 b a diameter comparable to our own planet Jupiter despite having just 5% of Jupiter’s mass.
This might well mean that the planet won’t stay in the Jupiter size-range for long. One effect of being continually pummeled with intense radiation could be a loss of atmosphere over time. In another 100 million years, that could shrink the planet to the status of a “hot Neptune,” or, with a more radical loss of atmosphere, even a “sub-Neptune,” a planet type smaller than Neptune that is common in our galaxy but lacking in our solar system.
Fun Facts
Four hundred light-years is much too far away to capture images of stellar flares striking orbiting planets. So how did a science team led by Netherlands astronomer Ekaterina Ilin discover this was happening? They used space-borne telescopes, NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and the European Space Agency’s CHEOPS (CHaracterising ExoPlanets Telescope), to track flares on the star, and also to trace the path of the planet’s orbit.
Both telescopes use the “transit” method to determine the diameter of a planet and the time it takes to orbit its star. The transit is a kind of mini-eclipse. As the planet crosses the star’s face, it causes a tiny dip in starlight reaching the telescope. But the same observation method also picks up sudden stabs of brightness from the star – the stellar flares. Combining these observations over five years’ time and applying rigorous statistical analysis, the science team revealed that the planet is zapped with six times more flares than it would be without that magnetic connection.
The Discoverers
A team of scientists from the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland, led by Ekaterina Ilin of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, published their paper on the planet-star connection, “Close-in planet induces flares on its host star,” in the journal Nature on July 2, 2025.
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Explore This Section Exoplanets Home Exoplanets Overview Exoplanets Facts Types of Exoplanets Stars What is the Universe Search for Life The Big Questions Are We Alone? Can We Find Life? The Habitable Zone Why We Search Target Star Catalog Discoveries Discoveries Dashboard How We Find and Characterize Missions People Exoplanet Catalog Immersive The Exoplaneteers Exoplanet Travel Bureau 5 Ways to Find a Planet Strange New Worlds Universe of Monsters Galaxy of Horrors News Stories Blog Resources Get Involved Glossary Eyes on Exoplanets Exoplanet Watch More Multimedia ExEP View the full article
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By USH
Since November 2024, strange blinking lights have been reported worldwide, an unexplained phenomenon that’s left many puzzled. MrMBB333 believes he may have found a connection.
Also known as electrical pollution, dirty electricity refers to high-frequency voltage spikes that ride along standard power lines. These rogue signals, forms of electromagnetic interference (EMI), can spread through our infrastructure, causing devices to glitch or behave unpredictably.
If this interference is appearing globally, the source might be something massive, possibly deep within Earth’s core. Rogue frequencies from the core could travel up and interact with power grids, solar systems, and transmission lines, triggering widespread anomalies.
Supporting this idea is a discovery from NASA’s ANITA project in Antarctica. While searching for cosmic neutrinos, scientists instead detected impossible radio signals rising from deep within Earth, signals that defy current physics.
According to current science, these waves should have been absorbed by the Earth’s crust long before reaching the detectors. But they weren’t.
When researchers checked their findings against other experiments, nothing lined up. This means they didn’t detect neutrinos, but something entirely unknown. Could this be a new kind of particle? A glitch in reality? Or something even stranger?
Although it is not known whether the strange radio signals detected deep beneath the Antarctic ice are related to the rogue signals believed to originate from Earth's core, MrMBB333 suggests there could be a connection. He proposes that similar forms of electromagnetic interference (EMI) might be disrupting global electronics and even contributing to the mysterious blinking light phenomenon.
Another possible factor at play is that the magnetic field is weakening as well as Solar Cycle 25 — the current 11-year cycle of solar activity marked by the Sun’s magnetic field reversal and increasing sunspot activity. This cycle began in December 2019 and is expected to reach its peak in 2025.
Therefore, could this solar phenomenon be interfering with the rogue electromagnetic signals from the Earth’s core are behind the strange blinking lights observed around the world?
If that’s the case, although I don’t recall the blinking light phenomenon ever appearing this intensely before, then the strange lights may begin to fade as Solar Cycle 25 winds down. Still, that doesn’t explain the origin of the mysterious radio signals rising from deep beneath Antarctica’s ice.
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By NASA
The core portion of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has successfully completed vibration testing, ensuring it will withstand the extreme shaking experienced during launch. Passing this key milestone brings Roman one step closer to helping answer essential questions about the role of dark energy and other cosmic mysteries.
“The test could be considered as powerful as a pretty severe earthquake, but there are key differences,” said Cory Powell, the Roman lead structural analyst at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Unlike an earthquake, we sweep through our frequencies one at a time, starting with very low-level amplitudes and gradually increasing them while we check everything along the way. It’s a very complicated process that takes extraordinary effort to do safely and efficiently.”
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This video shows the core components of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope undergoing a vibration test at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The test ensures this segment of the observatory will withstand the extreme shaking associated with launch. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center The team simulated launch conditions as closely as possible. “We performed the test in a flight-powered configuration and filled the propulsion tanks with approximately 295 gallons of deionized water to simulate the propellent loading on the spacecraft during launch,” said Joel Proebstle, who led this test, at NASA Goddard. This is part of a series of tests that ratchet up to 125 percent of the forces the observatory will experience.
This milestone is the latest in a period of intensive testing for the nearly complete Roman Space Telescope, with many major parts coming together and running through assessments in rapid succession. Roman currently consists of two major assemblies: the inner, core portion (telescope, instrument carrier, two instruments, and spacecraft) and the outer portion (outer barrel assembly, solar array sun shield, and deployable aperture cover).
Now, having completed vibration testing, the core portion will return to the large clean room at Goddard for post-test inspections. They’ll confirm that everything remains properly aligned and the high-gain antenna can deploy. The next major assessment for the core portion will involve additional tests of the electronics, followed by a thermal vacuum test to ensure the system will operate as planned in the harsh space environment.
This video highlights some of the important hardware milestones as NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope moves closer to completion. The observatory is almost fully assembled, currently built up into two large pieces: the inner portion (telescope, instrument carrier, two instruments, and spacecraft) and outer portion (outer barrel assembly, solar array sun shield, and deployable aperture cover). This video shows the testing these segments have undergone between February and May 2025. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center In the meantime, Goddard technicians are also working on Roman’s outer portion. They installed the test solar array sun shield, and this segment then underwent its own thermal vacuum test, verifying it will control temperatures properly in the vacuum of space. Now, technicians are installing the flight solar panels to this outer part of the observatory.
The team is on track to connect Roman’s two major assemblies in November, resulting in a whole observatory by the end of the year that will then undergo final tests. Roman remains on schedule for launch by May 2027, with the team aiming for as early as fall 2026.
Click here to virtually tour an interactive version of the telescope The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.
By Ashley Balzer
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Jun 04, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
Scientists have discovered a star behaving like no other seen before, giving fresh clues about the origin of a new class of mysterious objects.X-ray: NASA/CXC/ICRAR, Curtin Univ./Z. Wang et al.; Infrared: NASA/JPL/CalTech/IPAC; Radio: SARAO/MeerKAT; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk An unusual star (circled in white at right) behaving like no other seen before and its surroundings are featured in this composite image released on May 28, 2025. A team of astronomers combined data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope on Wajarri Country in Australia to study the discovered object, known as ASKAP J1832−0911 (ASKAP J1832 for short).
ASKAP J1832 belongs to a class of objects called “long period radio transients” discovered in 2022 that vary in radio wave intensity in a regular way over tens of minutes. This is thousands of times longer than the length of the repeated variations seen in pulsars, which are rapidly spinning neutron stars that have repeated variations multiple times a second. ASKAP J1832 cycles in radio wave intensity every 44 minutes, placing it into this category of long period radio transients. Using Chandra, the team discovered that ASKAP J1832 is also regularly varying in X-rays every 44 minutes. This is the first time that such an X-ray signal has been found in a long period radio transient.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/ICRAR, Curtin Univ./Z. Wang et al.; Infrared: NASA/JPL/CalTech/IPAC; Radio: SARAO/MeerKAT; Image processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk
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