Astronomers at Tel Aviv University in Israel have discovered an exoplanet planet using Albert Einstein's age old Theory of Relativity.
The exoplanet which is officially called Kepler-76b falls in the category of 'hot jupiters' with its weight being 25 percent heavier than Jupiter. The Kepler-76b nicknamed as Einstein's planet is located in the Cygnus constellation some 2,000 light-years away and orbits its star in just 1.5 days.
The exoplanet was discovered bringing into use Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity rather than the usual transit method of locating planets.
Einstein's theory of Relativity states the 'beaming' effect wherein a planet brightens when it comes a bit closer to Earth and dims as it move away. This is because the relativistic effects make the light particle or photons pile together and focus them with the star's movement.
"This is the first time that this aspect of Einstein's theory of relativity has been used to discover a planet," Tsevi Mazeh, research team member at Tel Aviv University.
Giving a miss to the traditional transit method, the astronomers further banked on the gravitational tides of the orbiting planet which causes the star to expand into a football shape. The star then appears wider as it faces Earth showing a greater surface area.
And lastly, the planet itself reflects an amount of the star's light which led to its discovery.
The scientists attributed significant contribution to NASA's Kepler spacecraft which provided detailed observation required for the discovery of new planet.
"This was only possible because of the exquisite data NASA is collecting with the Kepler spacecraft for more than 150,000 stars," said study leader Simchon Faigler of Tel Aviv University.
Kepler is designed to find new planets but by using the transit method, which locates a star by its dimness when a planet passes round it in the course of periodical orbiting.
Scientists, however, pointed out that the Einstein-based method of discovery is presently limited to large sized worlds only and Earth-shaped planets is beyond its reach.
The study of the planet discovery is published in the Astrophysical Journal.