Yeah, "dense" kind of under-sells it. Given the distance to its host star, I would guess that this must be a gas giant core that had its outer envelope blown away? Otherwise this seems hard to fit into our typical models of planet formation
Well yeah? From what I read, this is a larger star than average, as well as a really close orbit.
I am failing to understand why this is surprising to the experts because the description sounds to me like the sort of exoplanet that there is/was a heavy bias towards from the beginning.