A Cotton Candy Planet? Astronomers Say It Actually Could Be Possible

Amaze Lab

Oftentimes when astronomers discover new exoplanets they’re molten hot hellscapes or solid frozen spheres of ice. However, WASP-193b which resides 1,232 light-years is a little different.

Transcript

00:00Oftentimes when astronomers discover new exoplanets, they're molten hot hellscapes or solid frozen spheres of ice.

00:10However, WASP-193b, which resides 1,232 light-years away, is a little different.

00:18Not only is it around 50% larger than the likes of Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system,

00:23it's so wispy and light experts say it's around the same consistency of cotton candy.

00:28According to recent observations, WASP-193b is only around 1% the density of Earth,

00:34despite having a diameter roughly 16 times that of our planet.

00:38And its lack of density is sort of throwing scientists for a loop.

00:41It's the second least dense planet ever discovered.

00:44However, the other is much smaller, which makes more sense.

00:47With the lead astronomer investigating the exoplanet saying about it,

00:50quote,

00:50Its extremely low density makes it a real anomaly among the more than 5,000 exoplanets discovered to date.

00:56This extremely low density cannot be reproduced by standard models of irradiated gas giants,

01:01even under the unrealistic assumption of a coreless structure.

01:04Usually in the cosmos, large objects gather mass and pull more material in,

01:08which then compresses and builds density.

01:11WASP-193b shirks this fact of physics,

01:15meaning scientists have no idea what it's made of.

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