In a recent announcement on Monday, NASA revealed that this planet could exist in the Whirlpool Galaxy – also known as Messier 51 (M51) spiral galaxy – based on observations made by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
An exoplanet is a planet outside our solar system that typically orbits a star, rather than our Sun within our galaxy. Until now, all other planets have been found within the Milky Way, and most of them have been located within a distance of less than 3,000 light-years from Earth.
NASA’s observatory has for the first time detected signs of a planet outside the Solar System.
The region emitting bright X-rays is very small, which means that a planet passing in front of it would be easily detected as it would block most or all of the X-rays. This allows for the discovery of exoplanets at much greater distances.
However, researchers will have to wait a long time to confirm whether they have indeed discovered an extragalactic exoplanet. Due to its large orbit, the planetary candidate will not pass in front of its companion for another 70 years, meaning that it could take decades to confirm this observation.
If this planet does exist, experts say it would have to survive a supernova event that produces neutron stars or black holes. Furthermore, in the future, the accompanying star may also explode as a supernova and cause the planet to be obliterated once again with extremely high radiation levels.
Researchers will search the archives of both Chandra, which contains valuable data for about 20 galaxies, and the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton satellite, to find additional exoplanet candidates in other galaxies.
They also added that another intriguing research direction is to search for X-ray transitions in X-ray sources of the Milky Way to discover new neighboring planets within anomalous environments.