WASP-12 b is in trouble. A giant ball of mostly hydrogen, the planet circles its star once every 25 hours. The resulting intense stellar irradiation drives super-sonic storms of plasma around the world, and the atmosphere has so much thermal energy, in fact, that some of it is escaping into space. But it gets worse. WASP-12 b is steadily tumbling toward its host star, and astronomers expect that, within a few million years, the star will eat the planet.

WASP-12 b is one of a few hundred hot Jupiters, gas giants very close to their stars, and so far, it’s the only one we have confirmed in a death spiral. Many other hot Jupiters probably are probably also condemned, but how many more can we find perched on the edge of destruction? And, come to think of it, how did the planets find themselves in such precarious positions in the first place? To answer these questions, astronomers need to understand how many hot Jupiters there are out there and how many more are left to be found.