Astronomers have discovered a rare exoplanetary beast, and it’s providing evidence that planetary formation and evolution over time take a lot of different pathways. It’s a super-Earth getting positively cooked by its host star, but the baffling part is its big sibling right next door [ link to paper ].  The star is called WASP-132 . It’s about 400 light-years from us, and is slightly smaller, cooler, and lower mass than the Sun. The newly discovered planet, called WASP-132 c, was found using observations by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS , which scans the skies looking at relatively nearby stars. If we happen to see a planet’s orbit edge-on then it will pass in front of its star once per orbit, causing it to dim somewhat on a regular period. This event is called a transit , and is still the most successful method in finding exoplanets: alien worlds orbiting other stars.…