Um planeta semelhante a algodão doce
This cotton candy planet isn't alone; there are other similar planets belonging to 9️⃣ a class scientists facetiously call "puffy Jupiters." The lightest planet ever discovered is the superpuffy Kepler 51d, which is nearly 9️⃣ the size of Jupiter but a hundred times lighter than the gas giant.
Puffy Jupiters have largely been a mystery for 9️⃣ 15 years, said lead study author Khalid Barkaoui. But WASP-193b, because of its size, is an ideal candidate for further 9️⃣ analysis by the James Webb Space Telescope and other observatories.
"The planet is so light that it's difficult to think of 9️⃣ an analogous, solid-state material," said Barkaoui, a postdoctoral researcher of Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of 9️⃣ Technology, in a news release. "The reason why it's close to cotton candy is because both are mostly made of 9️⃣ light gases rather than solids. The planet is basically super fluffy."
WASP-193b, which researchers think is made up of mostly hydrogen 9️⃣ and helium, was a huge puzzle for researchers to piece together. Because the exoplanet's density is so light for its 9️⃣ size, calculating its mass became a challenge.
Desafio jogo betânia calcular a massa do planeta
Usually, scientists determine mass using a technique called 9️⃣ radial velocity, in which researchers analyze how a star's spectrum, a graph that indicates the intensity of light emissions in 9️⃣ wavelengths, shifts as a planet orbits it. The bigger the planet, the more the star's spectrum can shift - but 9️⃣ this didn't work for WASP-193b, which is so light, it didn't make any pull on the star that the team 9️⃣ could detect.
Because of how small the mass signal was, it took the team four years to gather data and calculate 9️⃣ WASP-193b's mass, Barkaoui explained. Because the extremely low numbers they found were so rare, the researchers completed multiple trials of 9️⃣ data analysis, just to be sure.
"We were initially getting extremely low densities, which were very difficult to believe in the 9️⃣ beginning," said co-lead author Francisco Pozuelos, a senior researcher at Spain's Institute of Astrophysics of Andalucia, in a news release.
Eventually 9️⃣ the team discovered the planet's mass is a measly 14% that of Jupiter, despite being so much bigger.
Um planeta com 9️⃣ uma atmosfera ext ```python endedora
But a bigger size means a bigger "extended atmosphere," said study coauthor Julien de Wit, an associate professor 9️⃣ of planetary science at MIT. That means WASP-193b provides an especially useful window into these puffy planets' formation.
"The bigger a 9️⃣ planet's atmosphere, the more light can go through," de Wit told jogo betânia . "So it's clear that this planet 9️⃣ is one of the best targets we have for studying atmospheric effects. It will be a Rosetta Stone to try 9️⃣ and resolve the mystery of puffy Jupiters."
But it's also not clear how WASP-193b even formed, Barkaoui said. The "classical evolution 9️⃣ models" of gas giants don't quite explain the phenomenon.
"WASP-193b is an outlier of all planets discovered to date," he said.
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