Bulgarian Project Discovers 17 Exoplanets

Petya Petrova

BTA Photo

Sofia,

27.03.2024 16:02

(BTA)

For more than two years, with the help of the Science Research Fund at the Ministry of Education and Science and thanks to the Vihren National Science Programme, Bulgaria has a group that searches for and finds exoplanets. The Bulgarian Exo-Restart group has already found 17 new exoplanets with data from space and ground-based telescopes. The team is led by Dr Trifon Trifonov, said Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vladimir Bozhilov from the Faculty of Physics of Sofia University, who is also part of the team. Bozhilov is among the participants in an ongoing forum "HOMO FUTURO and Life of the 42nd Parallel", organized by BGlobal magazine. BTA is a media partner of the event.

Bozhilov focused on the discovery of two twin planets at a distance of 1,000 light years from Earth. "There are two planets 1,000 light years from Earth that are larger than the gas giant Jupiter. They were born as twins, with the difference that one planet is closer to its star and makes two orbits around it in the same amount of time that the more distant one makes one orbit," the scientist said, explaining that "this type of behavior is called 2:1 orbital resonance. This is only the second such system known to the world."

The discovery, he says, is extremely important because it allows models of planet formation to be confirmed or rejected.

"This is how we are rewriting the textbooks with the help of the Bulgarian group of the Exo-Restart project," said Bozhilov, who is more than convinced that the future is cosmic.

/NZ/