Astronomers have revealed that there are planets out there where their atmospheres have been stripped away by their suns, according to a new study.

Those exoplanets that orbit too close around their host stars are at risk of high energy radiation that is emitted by their sun, as this stream of energy sends a torrent of charged particles that can disintegrate a planet's atmosphere. This radiation can strip away the gaseous layers of these alien worlds according to an international team of scientists.

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Researchers analyzed data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope where its main mission is to search and identify planets outside the solar system in distant star systems.

In this new study, scientists focused on a certain class of exoplanets known as "super Earths" that are rocky planets in the habitable zone of their star system, possessing about twice to 10 times more mass than our own planet.

According to co-author of the study, Guy Davies from the University of Birmingham, when these planets are so close, next to their suns, it is quite similar to standing next to a hairdryer on its maximum hottest setting.

Prior to these findings, there have been many theories and speculations about these kinds of planets where their atmospheres are slowly being stripped away of their tenuous atmospheric layers. Now, we have direct observational evidence to confirm this phenomenon, removing any doubts of this theory, noted Davies.

In order to confirm this theory, the astronomers utilized a method known as asteroseismology, to examine the internal core structure of these stars. Upon the characterization of the host star, the team was able to derive the exact sizes of the exoplanets orbiting their host stars. 

These new findings are pivotal for providing important implications on the current knowledge of stellar systems. This can then yield new insight about how our own solar system and the planets evolved over time, which can be attributed to the crucial role that the sun has to the rest of the bodies.

Davies says that these results show that planets that possess a specific size that are also located close to their stars are more likely to have a bigger size during the early stages of their formation, which means that these exoplanets would have appeared very different in their past.

This new study is published in the journal Nature Communications.