An international team of astronomers has announced a significant discovery in the field of exoplanet research: the detection of a new exoplanet designated TOI-6038 A b. This planet orbits a bright late F-type star located approximately 578 light-years away from Earth.
TOI-6038 A b is remarkable in several respects. Its dimensions are astonishing; the exoplanet is about six times larger than Earth and nearly 80 times more massive, which raises interesting questions about its composition, formation, and atmospheric properties. The discovery is detailed in a paper published on January 4, 2025, on the arXiv preprint server.
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6 times larger but 80 times as massive?
Per the paper the 6(.41) is indeed referring to the radius. Volume scales as R^3, so if the density of this planet and the earth were the same we would expect the mass to be 263 times as large as Earth’s.
Neptune, for instance, is 3.8 time Earth’s radius, and 17 times its mass instead of 54.9 time its mass as you might naively expect from the radius.
These ratios (54.9/17 vs 263/80) are almost the same. So the new planet is about as dense as Neptune.
