NEWS🚨: Astronomers say they just found an ‘impossible planet’ that shouldn’t exist https://t.co/xfoffNRt5V
"It shouldn't exist."
Astronomers have confirmed the existence of a planet that defies conventional planetary science.
How?
By orbiting its star the wrong way, contrary to our mathematical assumptions about what was possible.
In a discovery led by the University of Hong Kong, researchers have identified a retrograde-orbiting planet in the nu Octantis binary system—meaning it moves in the opposite direction to the orbital motion of its two parent stars.
The planet, about twice the mass of Jupiter, challenges long-standing theories, which held that such an orbit would be too unstable to exist. Using 18 years of high-precision data and new observations from the European Southern Observatory, scientists confirmed the planet’s rare motion and stability.
The research also revealed that one of the two stars, nu Oct B, is actually a white dwarf—a stellar remnant that once ejected most of its mass. This revelation led researchers to propose that the planet may be a second-generation world, either formed from matter shed during the white dwarf's formation or captured into its backward orbit.
This makes it one of the few known planetary systems to emerge from such a complex stellar evolution process. The findings upend traditional views on how and where planets can form, opening a new frontier in the study of exotic planetary systems.
Source: Cheng, H. W., et al. (2025). A retrograde planet in a tight binary star system with a white dwarf. Nature
