Artist’s illustration of the PSR J2322-2650b
A strange, distant exoplanet with carbon in its atmosphere and extraordinarily high temperatures is unlike any other planet we’ve seen – and it’s not clear how it could have formed
Astronomers have discovered what appears to be one of the strangest worlds known in the universe: a lemon-shaped planet.
According to a study this Tuesday in The Astrophysical Journal Lettersthis strange body orbits a type of rapidly rotating neutron star called a pulsar — which, in itself, is already unusual, but still far from having the strangest aspect of the exoplanet PSR J2322-2650b.
The team from the University of Chicago identified it, which is more than 2000 light years from Earth, using the James Webb Space Telescope. It was immediately noticed that there was something unusual about him.
The spectrum of light they measured coming from the planet did not show water and carbon dioxide, contrary to what would be expected to happen on a world with a mass similar to Jupiter like this one.
However, the presence of carbon molecules was verified.
Lemon Planet Defies Rules of Planetary Formation
As it comes out to, Molecular carbon has never before been observed in the atmosphere of any exoplanetbecause any carbon present in a planet’s atmosphere is much more likely to bond with other atoms than with itself.
“For molecular carbon to exist in the atmosphere, it is necessary to eliminate practically everything else, all the oxygen, all the nitrogen, and we simply don’t know how to do that. We don’t know of any other planetary atmosphere that even remotely resembles this one”, explained the research leader, Michael Zhangto the same magazine.
“The strangest exoplanet”
The planet is so close to its host star, and the host star is so massive, that it is thought to have been deformed by the pulsar’s gravity, taking on an oblong, lemon-like shape.
There, a full year lasts just 7.8 hoursand even the coldest spots on the planet have about 650 °C.
Unlike most other giant planets, the winds blow in the opposite direction to the planet’s rotation.
“You can imagine that this planet would look dark red, with graphite clouds in the atmosphere. is definitely the strangest exoplanet“, Salientou Zhang.
Total mystery: All these peculiarities make it difficult to explain how PSR J2322-2650b could have formed — appearing to defy established models of planetary formation.
