'Bigger than 78 Earths': Indian scientists find monster planet outside the solar system
Produced by: Mohsin Shaikh
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Indian Breakthrough
A team from PRL Ahmedabad discovered TOI-6038A b—an alien world bigger than Earth, marking a proud leap for India's space science efforts.
Sub-Saturn Surprise
The planet is 78.5 times Earth’s mass and 6.41 times its radius—fitting into the rare “sub-Saturn” class absent in our solar system.
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Binary Mystery
Orbiting an F-type star in a binary system with a distant K-type companion (3217 AU away), its formation challenges traditional planetary models.
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Blazing Orbit
TOI-6038A b completes one orbit in just 5.83 days around its bright, metal-rich star, suggesting intense stellar influence and rapid motion.
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Rocky Core
Preliminary findings hint that 75% of the planet’s mass is a dense rocky core—suggesting a complex planetary evolution path.
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Instrumental Firsts
This is the second planet found using India’s PARAS-2 spectrograph at Mount Abu—the highest-resolution RV spectrograph in all of Asia.
Bright Target
The system’s brightness makes it ideal for atmospheric and spin-orbit alignment studies—crucial for decoding exoplanet migration theories.
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Formation Puzzle
A wide-orbiting companion star adds layers of intrigue to how TOI-6038A b formed, migrated, and evolved over cosmic time.
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National Milestone
This is India’s fifth confirmed exoplanet discovery, spotlighting ISRO’s growing expertise in high-precision planetary detection.
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