NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a rare type of exoplanet, that is, a planet outside our solar system, whose atmospheric composition “challenges our understanding of how it formed,” as revealed by the American space agency in a press release.
Officially named PSR J2322-2650bThis Jupiter-mass object appears to have an exotic atmosphere, dominated by helium and carbon, never seen before, NASA says.
Clouds of soot will likely float in the air, and deep within the planet they carbon clouds They can condense and form diamonds, although how the planet formed remains a mystery, says the paper published Tuesday in Letters from the astrophysical journal.
“It was an absolute surprise,” he says. Peter Gaoco-author of the study, from the Carnegie Earth and Planetary Laboratory in Washington. “I remember after we got the data, our collective reaction was, ‘What the hell is that?’ » This is extremely different from what we expected.
This planetary-mass object was known to orbit a pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star. a pulsar It emits beams of electromagnetic radiation at regular intervals, which typically vary between milliseconds and seconds. These pulsing beams can only be seen when pointed directly at Earth, like the beams of a lighthouse, according to NASA.
This millisecond pulsar is expected to emit mainly gamma rays and other high-energy particles, invisible to Webb’s infrared vision. Without a bright star, scientists can study the planet in great detail throughout its orbit.
“This system is unique because we can see the planet illuminated by its host star, but not at all,” he says. Maya Beleznay, third-year doctoral student at Stanford University in California, who worked on modeling the shape of the planet and the geometry of its orbit.
“Thus we obtain a spectrum truly virgin. And we can study this system in more detail than normal exoplanets,” Beleznay adds.
“The planet orbits a completely strange star: it has the mass of the Sun, but the size of a city,” he says. Michael Zhangprincipal investigator of this study, from the University of Chicago.
“It’s a new type of planetary atmosphere that no one had seen before. “Instead of finding the usual molecules we expect to find on an exoplanet, like water, methane and carbon dioxide, we saw molecular carbon, particularly C₃ and C₂,” adds Zhang.
The PSR J2322-2650b is very close to its star, just 1.6 million kilometers. In contrast, the distance between the Earth and the Sun is approximately 160 million kilometers. Due to its extremely narrow orbit, the exoplanet’s full year – the time it takes to orbit its star – is only 7.8 hours. Gravitational forces from the much heavier pulsar pull the mass planet Jupiter into a strange lemon shape.
“Did this object form like a normal planet? No, because its composition is completely different,” says Zhang. “Was it formed by stripping a star of its exterior, like ‘normal’ black widow systems do? Probably not, because nuclear physics does not produce pure carbon. It is very difficult to imagine how this extremely carbon-rich composition is obtained. “This seems to rule out any known formation mechanism,” explains the author.
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