Low-density “cotton candy planets” continue to be a cosmic puzzle for astronomers.Exoplanet even though he is 50% larger than gas giant Jupiter WASP-193b The density is 1/7th. This extremely low density is said to be comparable to that of light and fluffy cotton candy. The research began on May 14th. natural astronomy.
“WASP-193b is the second least dense planet ever discovered after Kepler-51d, which is much smaller,” said study co-author Khalid Barkaoui, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Liège in Belgium. he said. stated in a statement.
According to the research team, WASP-193b’s extremely low density makes it a significant anomaly among the more than 5,000 exoplanets discovered by scientists.
“Its extremely low density makes it truly an anomaly among the more than 5,000 exoplanets discovered so far,” Barkaoui said. “This extremely low density cannot be reproduced by standard models of irradiated gas giant planets, even under the unrealistic assumption of a coreless structure.”
[Related: These ‘super puff’ planets have the same density as cotton candy.]
WASP-193b is approximately 1,200 light-years from Earth. The planet was first discovered in 2009 by the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP). This international collaboration of academic institutions operated two robotic observatories, one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern hemisphere. Each observatory used multiple wide-angle cameras to measure the brightness of thousands of individual stars across the sky. WASP-South Observatory detected Periodic light drop– called Transit – from the star WASP-193. These periodic dips in brightness coincided with the planet passing in front of the star every 6.25 days. Astronomers then measured the amount of light the planet blocked each time it passed and estimated the planet’s size.
In this study, the team used observations from the TRAPPIST-South and SPECULOOS-South observatories in Chile to measure WASP-193b’s signal at different wavelengths and confirm that it is a planet. They also measured the planet’s mass using data collected by HARPS and the CORALIE spectrometer.
All of these measurements led to the conclusion that, surprisingly, WASP-193b has a surprisingly low density. Its mass and size are about 0.14 and 1.5 that of Jupiter. So the density is approximately 0.059 grams per cubic centimeter. By comparison, cotton candy has a density of about 0.05 grams per cubic centimeter, and Earth’s density is 5.51 grams per cubic centimeter.
“This planet is so light that it’s hard to think of solid analogs,” said study co-author Julian de Witt, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. stated in a statement. “They’re similar to cotton candy because they’re both similar to air. This planet is basically very fluffy.”
The research team believes that WASP-193b is made mostly of hydrogen and helium. These gases may form a vastly expanded atmosphere that extends tens of thousands of miles further than Jupiter’s own stormy atmosphere. We still don’t know exactly how a planet can inflate this much, since it requires storing large amounts of energy deep inside the planet.
[Related: Watch 17 years of an exoplanet’s journey in only 10 seconds.]
“I don’t know where to place this planet among all the formation theories that we currently have, because it’s an outlier of all the formation theories,” said study co-author Andalusia, Spain. says Francisco Pozuelos, an astronomer at the Astronomical Institute. stated in a statement. “We cannot explain how this planet formed. By looking more closely at its atmosphere, we will be able to constrain the evolutionary path of this planet.”
In future research, the researchers hope that measurements from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will help uncover the mechanisms behind this bouncy castle-level inflation.
