This 'Cotton Candy' Planet Just Got a Whole Lot Weirder

Amaze Lab

Exoplanets, or planets which reside outside of the Solar System, can be wild and extremely unpredictable places. Now a planet officially named WASP-107b, which is just 200 light-years away, is baffling astronomers with its zany composition.

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00:00Exoplanets or planets which reside outside the solar system can be wild and extremely

00:08unpredictable places. Now, a planet officially named WASP-107b, which is just 200 light years

00:14away, is baffling astronomers with its frankly zany composition. WASP is huge, roughly 96% the

00:21size of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. However, its less than one-tenth is dense,

00:26and Jupiter is already made of gas, which is the least dense form of matter. Experts have

00:31previously said that means it's around the same density as cotton candy, but it gets even weirder,

00:36as WASP has an asymmetrical atmosphere. A year on this exoplanet only lasts 5.7 days,

00:41and because of that close transit, it's tidally locked, meaning one side is always facing its

00:46central star. And new observations with the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed that not only

00:51is one side hot and the other freezing, but the different sides have entirely different

00:55atmospheric compositions. Astronomers say that traditional models suggest this shouldn't

00:59be the case, but continued observations seem to confirm it, with the team adding that this

01:03could change the way we identify exoplanets and understand their chemical compositions.

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