Um planeta semelhante a algodão doce

This cotton candy planet isn't alone; there are other similar planets belonging to 🌧️ a class scientists facetiously call "puffy Jupiters." The lightest planet ever discovered is the superpuffy Kepler 51d, which is nearly 🌧️ the size of Jupiter but a hundred times lighter than the gas giant.

Puffy Jupiters have largely been a mystery for 🌧️ 15 years, said lead study author Khalid Barkaoui. But WASP-193b, because of its size, is an ideal candidate for further 🌧️ analysis by the James Webb Space Telescope and other observatories.

"The planet is so light that it's difficult to think of 🌧️ an analogous, solid-state material," said Barkaoui, a postdoctoral researcher of Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of 🌧️ Technology, in a news release. "The reason why it's close to cotton candy is because both are mostly made of 🌧️ light gases rather than solids. The planet is basically super fluffy."

WASP-193b, which researchers think is made up of mostly hydrogen 🌧️ and helium, was a huge puzzle for researchers to piece together. Because the exoplanet's density is so light for its 🌧️ size, calculating its mass became a challenge.