NASA discovered an "upside-down" planet

The theory of gravitational microlensing traces its origins to the ideas of Albert Einstein, who in 1936 calculated how gravity can bend and refract starlight. Deep in the constellation Lyra, astronomers discovered an amazing phenomenon, initially taken for an impossible object - a so-called "inverted planet."

As BAKU.WS reports, this was announced by the publication ecoticias.

This mysterious object, at first glance contradicting the laws of physics, became a historic discovery. It turned out that scientists were observing the first self-lensing binary system in history, located at a distance of about 2600 light years from Earth. It confirmed Einstein's prediction about gravitational lensing and essentially revolutionized our understanding of binary star research beyond our Galaxy.

For eight decades, the theory of microlensing remained untested on binary systems until the discovery of KOI-3278 changed the situation. This event gave science "the first repeating gravitational lens with a period of 88.18 days."

The author of the discovery is Ethan Kruse, a graduate student at the University of Washington, who studied data from the Kepler space telescope as part of his doctoral work. Unlike the transit effect, when a planet blocks the light of its star, the observed phenomenon gave the opposite result - a temporary increase in brightness.

The KOI-3278 system consists of two stars orbiting each other at a distance of approximately 70 million kilometers. One of the components is a white dwarf with a mass 200,000 times greater than Earth's, while being comparable in size to our planet. As astronomer Eric Agol from the University of Washington noted, "gravity curves space and time, so light passing by a star bends."

Typically, microlensing is observed between unrelated stars, and brightness flares occur randomly and do not repeat. However, in the KOI-3278 system, lensing repeats every 88 days, making it unique and allowing for predictable observations, precisely determining the characteristics of the stars.

The special value of the discovery lies not only in the lensing effect itself but also in the possibility of discovering many similar systems among the Kepler data. Since Kruse stumbled upon KOI-3278 by chance, scientists suggest that dozens of other similar objects, previously considered anomalies, may be hidden in the telescope's archives.

As NASA Deputy Administrator John Grunsfeld noted, "the fact that this binary system is only about 10 million years old and both stars have only recently left their 'stellar cradle' provides invaluable data on star formation processes." This discovery not only confirmed predictions made in 1973 but also proved that such configurations truly exist in the Universe.

The "inverted planet," which long confused astronomers, now opens new horizons for science, reminding us that the greatest discoveries are often hidden behind the most mysterious data.