Mass-loss leaves close-in exoplanets exposed to the core

An international team of scientists has found that giant exoplanets orbiting very close to their stars could lose a quarter of their mass during their lifetime. The team found that planets that orbit closer than 2% of an Astronomical Unit (AU), the distance between the Earth and the Sun, may lose their atmospheres completely, leaving just their core. The team, led by Dr Helmut Lammer of the Space Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, believe that the recently discovered CoRoT-7b 'Super Earth,' which has less than twice the mass of the Earth, could be the stripped core of a Neptune-sized planet...

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