What is big, with a fluffy, cotton candy-like composition? Turns out, a planet.
An international coalition of astronomers has newly discovered an unusual planet, dubbed WASP-193b, that鈥檚 about 50 per cent bigger than Jupiter and somehow still the second lightest planet ever found.
But WASP-193b, located beyond our solar system about 1,200 light-years from Earth, isn鈥檛 just a scientific oddity. The exoplanet could also be key to future research investigating atypical planetary formation, according to a study describing the find that published Tuesday in the journal .
This cotton candy planet isn鈥檛 alone; there are other similar planets belonging to a class scientists facetiously call 鈥減uffy Jupiters.鈥 The lightest planet ever discovered is the superpuffy Kepler 51d, which is nearly the size of Jupiter but a hundred times lighter than the gas giant.
Puffy Jupiters have largely been a mystery for 15 years, said lead study author Khalid Barkaoui. But WASP-193b, because of its size, is an ideal candidate for further analysis by the James Webb Space Telescope and other observatories.
鈥淭he planet is so light that it鈥檚 difficult to think of an analogous, solid-state material,鈥 said Barkaoui, a postdoctoral researcher of Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in . 鈥淭he reason why it鈥檚 close to cotton candy is because both are mostly made of light gases rather than solids. The planet is basically super fluffy.鈥
WASP-193b, which researchers think is made up of mostly hydrogen and helium, was a huge puzzle for researchers to piece together. Because the exoplanet鈥檚 density is so light for its size, calculating its mass became a challenge.
Usually, scientists determine mass using a technique called radial velocity, in which researchers analyze how a star鈥檚 , a graph that indicates the intensity of light emissions in wavelengths, shifts as a planet orbits it. The bigger the planet, the more the star鈥檚 spectrum can shift 鈥 but this didn鈥檛 work for WASP-193b, which is so light, it didn鈥檛 make any pull on the star that the team could detect.
Because of how small the mass signal was, it took the team four years to gather data and calculate WASP-193b鈥檚 mass, Barkaoui explained. Because the extremely low numbers they found were so rare, the researchers completed multiple trials of data analysis, just to be sure.
鈥淲e were initially getting extremely low densities, which were very difficult to believe in the beginning,鈥 said co-lead author Francisco Pozuelos, a senior researcher at Spain鈥檚 Institute of Astrophysics of Andalucia, in a news release.
Eventually the team discovered the planet鈥檚 mass is a measly 14 per cent that of Jupiter, despite being so much bigger.
But a bigger size means a bigger 鈥渆xtended atmosphere,鈥 said study coauthor Julien de Wit, an associate professor of planetary science at MIT. That means WASP-193b provides an especially useful window into these puffy planets鈥 formation.
鈥淭he bigger a planet鈥檚 atmosphere, the more light can go through,鈥 de Wit told CNN. 鈥淪o it鈥檚 clear that this planet is one of the best targets we have for studying atmospheric effects. It will be a Rosetta Stone to try and resolve the mystery of puffy Jupiters.鈥
But it鈥檚 also not clear how WASP-193b even formed, Barkaoui said. The 鈥渃lassical evolution models鈥 of gas giants don鈥檛 quite explain the phenomenon.
鈥淲ASP-193b is an outlier of all planets discovered to date,鈥 he said.
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