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What’s that? The

latest herbal tea

infusion?

Nope. It’s a small rodent that

lived on the island of Bramble

Cay, off the coast of

Queensland, Australia.

Tell me more.

It’s thought to be the first

known species of mammal to

be wiped out by man-made

climate change. The animals

have not been seen since

2009 and have recently been

declared extinct. It was

considered the Great Barrier

Reef’s only endemic

mammal.

How did that happen?

Bramble Cay measures just

150m by 340m and sits three

metres above sea level.

Experts say that rising sea

levels due to climate change

are to blame.

Are any others

species at risk?

Yes. A recent study at

the University of Connecticut

has estimated that up to one

in six species of animals and

plants could go extinct if

global temperatures rise by

4°C by the end of the century.

THE DOWNLOAD

Bramble Cay

melomys

Goodbye,

little friend

Ahh... it’s only a baby. The Kepler space
telescope has found the youngest exoplanet
yet discovered. K2-33b is a gas giant around
six times the size of Earth that orbits star K2-
33 in the Upper Scorpius region, some 500
light-years away, and is no more than 10
million years old.
That may not sound very ‘young’, but bear
in mind that Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and
that the overwhelming majority of the 3,000-
plus exoplanets discovered today are at least
a billion years old. “Earth is a middle-aged
planet – about 45 in human years,” said lead
author Trevor David. “By comparison, K2-33b
would be an infant of only a few weeks old.”
It is hoped that the new discovery will
enable scientists to get a more accurate

picture of how planets are formed. Already, its

proximity to its parent star – K2-33b is nearly

10 times closer to K2-33 than Mercury is to

the Sun – has called into question our

understanding of gas giants.

While such planets, which in our Solar

System lie a long way from the Sun, have been

found closely orbiting their parent stars before

now, it was always assumed that they were

formed further out then migrated inwards. K2-

33b’s relative youth, however, suggests it must

have formed more or less where it is now.

K2-33b was first detected when Kepler’s

K2 mission picked up a slight, regular

dimming of the light from its parent star, an

observation that was later confirmed by the

WM Keck Observator y in Hawaii.

YOUNGEST-EVER

EXOPLANET DISCOVERED

SPACE

Exoplanet K2-33b,

illustrated here, is so

close to its parent star

that it takes just five

days to orbit it