However this is very unlikely because only the inner region of the disk is affected. Burrows estimates that there is a one in 400,000 chance for Beta Pictoris to have such a close encounter with another star. Though Beta Pictoris is probably at least 100 million years old, other explanations for the warp do not allow it to last for very long. The size of the warp allows Burrows to roughly measure the mass of the orbiting body. It must lie well within the warp, probably within the clear zone that exists around Beta Pictoris.
Burrows estimates the planet is from one-twentieth to twenty times the mass of Jupiter.
If the suspected planet were as far from Beta Pictoris as Jupiter is from our Sun, it also would have about the same mass as Jupiter. The planet's orbit must be inclined by about three degrees to the plane of the Beta Pictoris disk, and this is typical of the inclinations of the orbits of the planets in our solar system. Though its precise age is not known, Beta Pictoris is generally considered a mature, main sequence star, slightly hotter than our Sun. However, Beta Pictoris is the only candidate that looks like it might possess a planetary system similar to our own. Beta Pictoris also is the only known star with a circumstellar disk of gas and dust that can be optically imaged.