Science is Fun Fridays!

 


The James Webb Telescope celebrated its 4th year in space yesterday.

And it recently discovered something surprising - a Jupiter sized exoplanet with diamonds and soot in the atmosphere.

The planet doesn't have the familiar helium-hydrogen combination, but is helium-carbon instead.  There are no common molecules of water, methane, or carbon dioxide.

"It's very hard to imagine how you get this extremely carbon-enriched composition.  It seems to rule out every known formation mechanism," says lead author, Michael Zhang.

Even more weird is the host star, which is a neutron sun.  No other pulsar is known to have a gas-giant planet, and few pulsars have planets at all.

The planet is also closer to its star than Earth is to our Sun, whereas gas giants in our system are much farther out.  It is lemon-shaped because the gravitational forces of the pulsar are pulling so strongly.

Molecular carbon doesn't appear in planets that are very close to their sun, due to extreme heat, so how are there diamonds?  Co-author Roger Romani theorized that once the planet cooled, carbon and oxygen in its interior crystallized. 

"Pure carbon crystals float to the top and get mixed into the helium...but then something has to happen to keep the oxygen and nitrogen away.  And that's where the mystery comes in."


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