The distant Earth-sized planet orbits so close to its parent star that gravity has stretched it so much that it has an egg-like shape.
Some known exoplanets are so close to their parent stars that they are subject to extremely harsh environments: These “ultra-short-period” planets take less than a day to orbit their parent stars, are heavily irradiated, and often have surfaces made entirely of lava.
Now, Faye Dai and colleagues at the University of Hawaii have discovered that…