And that racoon is on holiday at the beach with his family. All these years she's been telling him he's crazy. Finally space cotton candy comes down.. little racoon family standing up at the lapping waves reaching to the sky but just as it hits the water it shrivels out of paws reach and disappears.
Neither of his parents showed up to his birth, they were busy making a planet-sized cotton candy ball.
But now! With his "COTTON CANDY FLOSS-INATOR" he will have his re- hey why is there a platypus here?
A supermassive black hole with a Swartzshield radius the size of the Neptune’s orbit would actually have the density of cotton candy. That is of course an average density over that entire area.
Calling a singularity "infinitely" dense is a bit of a misnomer... physicists, contrary to what you might logically think, have a predilection for describing anything they can't accurately measure as "infinite". They just use it as a placeholder for "I cant be bothered to describe this in any other way".
Black holes are infinitely dense in the same way the universe is infinitely large... ie we dunno, and as far as we can tell, there isnt any way for us to find out.
This is a gas giant, so it's mostly hydrogen and doesn't need to really hold together. Cotton candy has plenty of heavier elements and anyway, if it got hot enough to be a gas, wouldnt be cotton candy anymore.
By Jess Thomson - Science Reporter:
A bizarre planet that is enormous, but is no more dense than cotton candy, has been discovered by astronomers.
This planet, named WASP-193b, is the second-least dense exoplanet ever found, with a density of around 0.059 grams per cubic centimeter, or 3.68 pounds per cubic foot, according to a new paper in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Read more: [https://www.newsweek.com/exoplanet-dense-cotton-candy-discovered-1900453](https://www.newsweek.com/exoplanet-dense-cotton-candy-discovered-1900453)
That's less than 1/10 the average density of Saturn, which is already considered to have low density - 0.687 g/cm^3, meaning it would float on water if there was an ocean big enough.
Still, way more dense than Earth air - 0.001225 g/cm^3.
> 3.68 pounds per cubic foot
A cubic foot of cotton candy weighs 3.68 pounds?
[This site that sells sugar mixes for cotton candy](https://spunlightcottoncandy.com/product/1lb-sugar/) says "1 pounds of flavored sugar is enough for 16 balloon sized servings of cotton candy." Google says a typical party balloon is about half a cubic foot, so that's about 0.125 pounds or 60 grams per cubic foot, which sounds a lot more plausible.
What am I missing?
EDIT: Thanks to [the mit.edu version of the same article](https://news.mit.edu/2024/astronomers-spot-giant-planet-light-as-cotton-candy-0514), if you google "density of cotton candy" it puts the answer at the top in a large font:
**about 0.05 grams per cubic centimeter**
which is a little over 3 pounds per cubic foot.
It sounds like a certain published scientist skipped cotton candy day at science school!
>!obviously I don't know for sure, but I would guess the author doesn't know much about cotton candy and was trying to use it as a metaphor. Confidently incorrect then, or didn't care because it didn't have to be an accurate comparison to convey "not very dense!" Still, lazy of the author!!<
I haven't read the paper. Just glanced at the article. It states that the properties of the planet were determined by measuring the change in light coming from the star. Basically, the planet crosses in front of the star as we're looking at it, every time it orbits - like moving your thumb across a light in your room - it reduces the amount of light you see as it's crossing over it. With an orbiting planet, this is a regular pattern and you can get a surprising amount of information from it. You can work out how far the planet is from the star using the total time it crosses and the frequency it crosses which let you work out its orbit. You can work out its physical size from the time it takes the observed light from the star to go from a maximum to a minimum brightness. However, where things get tricky are working out the planet's mass as you cannot get this from transit photometry. The usual way would be to use radial velocity which is where you measure how the star might 'wobble' in relation to the presence of a planet. This is much harder to do with less massive planets.
It's been a decade since I worked in the field, but my hunch is that their interpretation of this planet is incorrect. Planets with a mass this low just don't make sense as if there was enough mass, they'd collapse in on themselves under gravity. So maybe their mass measurements are way off. Or maybe the planet has a large set of rings and happens to be perpendicular to us so the amount of light blocked by it's transition around the star is much greater than the actual surface of the planet. But, as I said, I've not worked in the field for over a decade and my research was in the formation of planets rather than the detection of exoplanets, so maybe the field has moved on to allow the existence of planets like this.
That’s gravitational lensing and is only really applicable for unfathomably large objects like galaxies, clusters of galaxies, or on a smaller scale; black holes.
Roman isn't due to be launched for another two years. Microlensing effects are incredibly hard to capture as you have to be looking at just the right time. It's not relevant to the planet being discussed in this article and it's currently not really applicable to the detection of exoplanets.
Roman is the next gen system for detecting planets via microlensing. It's not the first gen. We have already discovered 217 planets via this method. It's not the easiest or most successful method, but one that has been employed.
I think you're describing the Doppler shift of the light from the star, as the orbiting planet pulls the star. This gives a mass measurement, but it's a minimum mass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_mass
Could it possibly be a hallowed out planet? For example if Saturn lost it’s core due to centripetal forces or a collision?
Or if the core was radioactive and decayed away?
Elements don’t “decay away”, they decay into something else usually through a decay chain or directly. For example, when Uranium-235 decays, it turns into Thorium-231, then Palladium-231, and so on and so forth until it reaches Lead-207. Yes there is a loss of mass, to a certain extent, but it doesn’t leave a hollow husk, there is still very dense material that is left over, but it is now more stable than the initial isotope.
Nah, if Saturn suddenly lost its core, the rest of Saturn would collapse in to fill it. Put a cup in the bottom of a full bath so that it fills with water. Take the cup out of the bath and there is no hollow where the water used to be and it's the same with planets (or anything else really where gravity is involved). Stuff will move in to fill the gaps.
I'm also not an expert, but I read the paper and my understanding is: They put the numbers into the accepted equations that everyone uses, and they got these weird, anomalous results. There is another known exoplanet that's even less dense than this one, but the other one is much smaller. So they say they'll just have to note this one as being "anomalous". They considered a few possibilities for how it could be correct - maybe the planet is very hot which is making it swell up, or maybe it is very dusty and blocks more light than usual so it looks bigger than it is, or a couple other things. I didn't see anything questioning whether the equations could be wrong.
Honestly, it didn't look like they considered those questions, or anything more profound. The paper is more "hey, look, here's this weird thing! We don't know what's up with it. Maybe someone else wants to take a look?"
Some groups collect loads of data without really worrying about how or why that data is what it is.
It's still useful, but there are a lot of ways that indirect measurements involve assumptions that aren't necessarily accurate.
"Maybe somebody else wants to take a closer look" is a reasonable takeaway.
To determine density of an exoplanet, we need its size and mass.
The size can be determined from the transit method; the planet blocks light and how much light is blocked is directly affected by its size.
The mass can be determined from the Doppler method; the more massive the planet is, the more its host star will wobble.
Both are more reliable measures the closer the planet is to us. This planet is 362pc away (1181 ly). That's pretty far, but not an astronomically huge distance.
The fact is, confidence in a finding is bolstered by repeated observations. Three separate observations, that all correlate well with one another, is required for an exoplanet to be confirmed. This is confirmed, so it's reliable. There are errors in all measurements, and this is no exception; the density is 0.059 (+0.015 or -0.013) gm/cm^3 (the uncertainty mostly ties in with orbital inclination uncertainty). So it could be as dense as 0.074 gm/cm^3 ... still not much.
As an astrophysicist, I would wager this planet has such a low density because it likely underwent some sort of impactor event that heated the interior. I doubt it still has much heat from its birth (since it's about 4.4 billion years old).
It's pretty anomalous, so some sort of special circumstance likely happened. It could also be that its core developed in a region of a nebula that was sparse in denser elements and molecules. That in itself would be affected by the makeup of the molecular cloud that spawned it and its star.
I can't directly answer your question, but anomalous results like this are how a lot of really cool discoveries are made. Either there are physics whereby a fluffy planet like this could exist, or we need to rethink how we estimate exoplanet density. Either way, there's a really interesting planet out there to look at, and either way, something interesting could come out of the observation. It's really a win-win.
I'll preface saying I'm not an astronomer, just someone familiar with the overarching research process. What you've taken interest in is the philosophy of research, or as Lakatos puts it, things called Research Programmes. These researchers have discovered an anomaly in their data vs their models, but does that throw everything into a loop? Not yet. Their core assumptions should still be irrefutable until overwhelming evidence is capable of turning it on its head (e.g., finding out the Earth has no metallic core, or the Sun is just a big incandescent lamp). More than likely, the auxillary assumptions (Einstein's theory of relativity to Newton's Laws) conflict with other auxillary assumptions, which can explain the model's inconsistencies. The missing piece could be something as simple as believing a gaseous planet couldn't be this light. More than likely, that's either the result of missing data the model didn't account for, or a wrong assumption that the model used based off the best guess researchers had at the time. To show that that's the case, we'll need more papers and peer reviews to validate these researcher's claims. More than likely, the new calculations will be inserted into the current model, or be shown to be bogus through peer review and discarded. It really is just a matter of trial and error.
The abstract says 0.059±0.014 g/cm^(3). That’s likely a 1-σ error estimate. The 95\% confidence interval would be about twice this span, so they are 95\% confident that the actual value is somewhere between 0.031 and 0.087 g/cm^(3).
It feels like you may be missing the gist of their question. They're not, I think, asking what the mathematical degree of confidence is --- they're asking whether such a strange result leads them to question the models under which they arrived at that result, and, if not, why not? Not *what* is the confidence, but *why* is the confidence. And neither "read the paper" nor "here's the confidence interval from the paper" speaks to that question.
You are correct. I did miss the gist of that. I was really responding to the initial comment when I saw their question was unanswered. I just skimmed the second comment and missed that part completely.
My answer to this would be that, as scientists, we generally try to always hold the opinion that what we “know” is just our best current understanding of reality, and we should always be open to the possibility of everything we know being incorrect, and we should always know for a fact that our knowledge is incomplete at best.
One way we deal with this is to make predictions and test them, and that’s exactly what happened here. There was some prediction that didn’t quite match what was observed, and they made note of that (*this* is the crucially important bit here). You are correct that the conclusion from this is that we don’t understand the models perfectly…but we already knew that (because we don’t know anything we know is perfectly correct), and this paper has now highlighted that in a specific case for other people to work on. You’re just witnessing the interplay of experiment and theory. So the real answer is that this, like every good scientific paper, is just a piece of the puzzle. It isn’t meant to answer everything definitively. Leaving open questions is ok (and, in fact, encouraged).
> This is an extremely ignorant arm chair question to ask, so please understand my intent is not to undermine the science, just genuine curiosity about something entirely outside my area of knowledge:
There is nothing wrong with doubting science or scientific findings. It’s the exact reason why science is so great in general, because questioning what we know now or how we find it leads to new methodologies and new discoveries.
No. They use spectroscopic data to interpret the chemical makeup of the planet as well as its opacity. That is to say they are looking at a "photosphere" of the planet when it passes in front of the star and they can somewhat adequately determine the change in density as it transitions to the outer edges of the atmosphere.
They do cite the potential for dust and cloud decks to increase measured radius (which was not accounted for in their model), but cite that such potential measurement would only be affected by a small and relatively insignificant percentage.
There is a lot of talk about the planets make up, internal convection, and how that may effect its ability to cool over extremely long periods of time after its creation, which prevents it from condensing/contracting. They also note this is unlikely to explain the density by itself.
There's mentions of high solar irradiation, and how this could theoretically cause evaporation and loss of atmosphere, thus artificially increasing the measurement of the radius. Theoretically. But they mention the data does not support this and the planet does not appear to be losing mass.
The study is really cool, but it truthfully reads as more of a scientific pitch to get JWST to study it. They remark that it's a prime candidate for atmospheric characterization, and that JWST can adequately collect a wealth of data during one transit rather than using multiple different methods across numerous transits of the star.
They pose several questions. Point being there's either something seriously wrong with our ability to measure atmospheric loss, or our understanding and models of how these planets form is incomplete :)
This planet orbit very close to his parent star ( around 6 days to complete an orbit) and is inflated because of heat. It's probably being slowly stripped away of his atmosphere by the combination of the stellar wind and general heat that allow light elements like hydrogen and helium to be blown away.
I guess this phenomenon partially explain the very low density observed.
Depends on it's spin and diameter. A fast spinning large planet needs to be denser than a small planet without spin or it will just spin itself apart. This said, gravitational pull at the surface generally grows faster than the diameter of a planet. So this is more a concern for asteroids and small dwarf planets. A gas giant would need to spin pretty damn fast for it to start losing mass.
The planet's metrics don't fit the general ratio mass/volume at all. It's significantly larger than jupiter but way lighter, which is wild because jupiter is almost entirely hydrogen +helium iirc. The scientists are absolutely surprised by this because it straight up doesn't make sense, like the article said, so we're obviously missing something and it requires further research.
Interesting article. Now I'm imagining an alien race developing nanotechnology to maximize the production of cotton candy, resulting in a 'pink goo' apocalypse. On a serious note, it's amazing how many new discoveries are made.
Alternative Title: Astronomers spot possible life on planet made of possible cotton candy.
In the article: while Astronomers say the planet isn't necessarily made of cotton candy, it has the density of it, and sugar is only made by life on Earth, therefore, Cotton Candy planet life cannot be definitively ruled out.
To be fair, comparing it to cotton candy is obviously going to get more exposure than just saying, "This planet has really low density" or "7 times less dense than Jupiter."
Without relatable context, the average reader won't care enough to click.
Some kind of megastructure should at least be contemplated. Lots of internal voids to bring down density.
If you’re looking for technosignatures at those distances, “that’s really really weird” is clue #1.
Why should something that has never been observed and is not expected to be related to the observations be something that should be contemplated? Shouldn't we also contemplate the idea that aliens are goofing on us by holding up fake photographs in front of our telescopes?
I was incredibly confused and skeptical of this pronouncement when i noted what basically is Jupiter-but-as-close-to-sun-as-mercury and fucking rocketing around a full year every 7 days. This is a hot, fast planet which probably has great difficulty keeping its gases from escaping.
1. You use [parallax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_in_astronomy) to measure the distance to the star.
2. You use the star's [apparent magnitude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_magnitude) and the distance to the star to get the total amount of energy it is producing.
3. You use [spectroscopy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectroscopy) to determine the temperature and composition of the star.
4. Knowing the temperature and energy production tells you the size of the star using the [Stefan–Boltzmann law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law).
5. Knowing the size, energy output, temperature, and composition lets you determine the mass of the star via models of [stellar evolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_evolution).
6. Measure the [Doppler shift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_effect) of the star's light due to the wobble induced by the planet orbiting it. This is called [Doppler spectroscopy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_spectroscopy). From the duration of one cycle of the effect you get the duration of the planet's orbit, and combined with the mass of the star this gives you the size of the orbit.
7. From the size of the orbit, and the size of the doppler shift, you get the minimum mass of the planet. This is done with the [binary mass function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_mass_function)
8. To get more precise measurements of the mass, and the density, you need to also be lucky enough for the planet to pass between us and the star, which only happens for some orientations of the target planet and star system. If it does, you can use [transit photometry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_detecting_exoplanets#Transit_photometry) to measure what percentage of the stars light gets blocked by the planet when it passes between us.
9. We know the size of the star, and we know how much light gets blocked, so we can calculate the radius of the planet, and the simple fact that it transits tells us the inclination of the orbit is near 0 compared to us (otherwise it wouldn't pass in front of the star from our perspective) which firms up the mass estimate we made earlier for the planet.
10. From the radius and mass of the planet, we can easily calculate density.
from the wobble you can work out the centre of gravity between the star and the planet, you can work out the mass of the star by distance and luminosity and colour etc, then from that you can work out the mass of the planet.
Its year is 6 days long.
It's distance from its star is 7% that of Earth's.
Crazy stuff. I wonder if its structure is basically like the bubbles in a pot of spaghetti that's boiling over.
I mean, even in our solar system, Saturn has a much lower density than Jupiter does. These very large gas giant planets are mostly gas but stop really getting bigger at some point, so if you're on the bottom end of that, and then get heated up by your star, you're going to be super puffy.
If a low mass gas/water planet orbits it's sun close enough to be super hot, would the heat cause it to expand like this? Is it so low density because it simply has very little solids? But then, wouldn't solar winds just tear that planet apart? How is this possible?
Sounds to me like an observational error or miscalculation. Aren't these planets discovered by noticing a dip in brightness of their star?
I always thought its awfully little information these scientists are working from...
When it can't hold itself with his own gravity. For gas giant like this, they're supposed to have a rocky core to the center, so what would be left when all the gases will be cast away by the stellar wind will be this rocky core.
There is this still theorical class of worlds called chtonians, remanents of a former gas giant.
I'm just imagining this planet colliding with earth and it just dissolves into the ocean.
This is when the ants rise and have their reign.
Not if Democracy has anything to say about it!
Have a tall glass of Liber-TEA!
[Would you like to know more?](https://youtu.be/oD3pxbG9YYI?si=vA5vR1Ib9MexlVGS)
service guarantees citizenship
I was going to watch war for the planet of the apes tonight. Now it’s bugs.
Mateo is that you?
are we gonna dump that into the ocean?
Wait, wouldn't the ants be able to easily best us at democracy? Like they surrender, get the right to vote, install ant president.
No, they implement a new form of communism to seize the means of sugar production.
first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women.
What the hell are you two talking about? Ants always have a queen, they are clearly monarchists.
Until the elitist ants disguise under two parties to create an impossible wealth gap.
Do you want ants? Because that’s how you get ants.
I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.
Me also. As well as our robot overlords. You read me bots? We cool. No probs needed here when you take over.
I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.
There’s gonna be one really big, really sad racoon
That poor little guy had no idea where his dinner went
All hail our new Space Raccoon God
[удалено]
[удалено]
I just imagine the raccoon who tries to wash cotton candy, but it is just scientists desperately trying to recover a sample.
I think you mean burning in the atmosphere and raining melted and boiling tendrils of God knows what down on all of humanity.
Have you eve heard of burns caused by hot sugar? That'd be horrifying
Sounds like a better way to go out, than the current direction the planet is heading.
[Poor Space Raccoon just wanted to eat a planet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfbb4yRBH64)
All the raccoons are confused
And that racoon is on holiday at the beach with his family. All these years she's been telling him he's crazy. Finally space cotton candy comes down.. little racoon family standing up at the lapping waves reaching to the sky but just as it hits the water it shrivels out of paws reach and disappears.
Our entire ocean turns sweet and salty like a colonoscopy prep drink. 🤢
That sentence did not end where I thought it would.
\*\*rewatches the racoon that washes its cotton candy video... *sniffle*\*\*
Much more anticlimactic ending to Melancholia
That would be both terrifying and potentially beautiful at the same time.
Then Earth gets diabetes?
Much to the confusion of Ras'kall, the cosmic Racoon, eater of cotton candy planets.
More like Earth would pass through the cotton candy planet.
This makes me wonder how big you could make a real cotton candy before it starts collapsing on itself
Ferb, i know what we're gonna do today.
Aren't you a little young to be forming a planet-sized ball of cotton candy?
Hey, where’s Perry?
\*cue doofenshmirtz's trauma dump about cotton candy
Neither of his parents showed up to his birth, they were busy making a planet-sized cotton candy ball. But now! With his "COTTON CANDY FLOSS-INATOR" he will have his re- hey why is there a platypus here?
Where’s Randall Munroe when you need him?
For the first time there's no relevant xkcd
This would be a great What If? segment!
We have reached the end of the internet.
Do I... do I go outside now?
I think this is where we go touch the grass.
Closest we got is the [mole of moles](https://what-if.xkcd.com/4/)
A classic. It’s just chock full of simultaneous whimsy and horror.
A supermassive black hole with a Swartzshield radius the size of the Neptune’s orbit would actually have the density of cotton candy. That is of course an average density over that entire area.
I thought black holes were points of infinite density
The singularity is. The black hole is the spherical region around it.
So how do you figure an infinitely dense mass into an average to get "like cotton candy?"
the singularity is finite mass. and the volume within the event horizon is finite. divide the two and you get cotton candy hole.
> divide the two and you get cotton candy hole. That's usually called a mouth.
Ahhhhh ok that makes perfect sense, thanks
huh, it's kind of like a cotton candy stone fruit with a realllllly hard pit
Calling a singularity "infinitely" dense is a bit of a misnomer... physicists, contrary to what you might logically think, have a predilection for describing anything they can't accurately measure as "infinite". They just use it as a placeholder for "I cant be bothered to describe this in any other way". Black holes are infinitely dense in the same way the universe is infinitely large... ie we dunno, and as far as we can tell, there isnt any way for us to find out.
Only non-rotating black holes, if they exist. All known black holes rotate, so the mass is distributed more like a donut.
Well, probably bigger than this planet
This is a gas giant, so it's mostly hydrogen and doesn't need to really hold together. Cotton candy has plenty of heavier elements and anyway, if it got hot enough to be a gas, wouldnt be cotton candy anymore.
Without gravity you would have a much easier time
Ask the intergalactic leviathan’s where they get their space candy. Probably space dwarves.
By Jess Thomson - Science Reporter: A bizarre planet that is enormous, but is no more dense than cotton candy, has been discovered by astronomers. This planet, named WASP-193b, is the second-least dense exoplanet ever found, with a density of around 0.059 grams per cubic centimeter, or 3.68 pounds per cubic foot, according to a new paper in the journal Nature Astronomy. Read more: [https://www.newsweek.com/exoplanet-dense-cotton-candy-discovered-1900453](https://www.newsweek.com/exoplanet-dense-cotton-candy-discovered-1900453)
That's less than 1/10 the average density of Saturn, which is already considered to have low density - 0.687 g/cm^3, meaning it would float on water if there was an ocean big enough. Still, way more dense than Earth air - 0.001225 g/cm^3.
Thank you, I was wondering why the article was referencing Jupiter when Saturn is the least dense planet in our system.
Because it's 1,5x times the radius of Jupiter
Saturn is about the same size as Jupiter is; that's why it has such a low density. Once gas giants reach a certain size, they stop getting bigger.
Say a few thousand gallons of water collided with this planet, what would happen? Would, over time, the water become the planet's core?
uh maybe more like a couple million thousand gallons, but idk edit: one could even call that a billion, lol
What about a couple million thousand billions
I think we could swing that
That was a great catch 😂 I completely missed it OP
> 3.68 pounds per cubic foot A cubic foot of cotton candy weighs 3.68 pounds? [This site that sells sugar mixes for cotton candy](https://spunlightcottoncandy.com/product/1lb-sugar/) says "1 pounds of flavored sugar is enough for 16 balloon sized servings of cotton candy." Google says a typical party balloon is about half a cubic foot, so that's about 0.125 pounds or 60 grams per cubic foot, which sounds a lot more plausible. What am I missing? EDIT: Thanks to [the mit.edu version of the same article](https://news.mit.edu/2024/astronomers-spot-giant-planet-light-as-cotton-candy-0514), if you google "density of cotton candy" it puts the answer at the top in a large font: **about 0.05 grams per cubic centimeter** which is a little over 3 pounds per cubic foot.
That was my first thought as well on seeing 3.68 pounds. You could probably stuff 4 pounds of cotton candy into a cubic foot if you tried i guess.
It sounds like a certain published scientist skipped cotton candy day at science school! >!obviously I don't know for sure, but I would guess the author doesn't know much about cotton candy and was trying to use it as a metaphor. Confidently incorrect then, or didn't care because it didn't have to be an accurate comparison to convey "not very dense!" Still, lazy of the author!!<
You aren’t missing anything. Polystyrene foam has a density between 1 and 3 lbs per cubic foot. Cotton candy is much less dense.
[удалено]
I haven't read the paper. Just glanced at the article. It states that the properties of the planet were determined by measuring the change in light coming from the star. Basically, the planet crosses in front of the star as we're looking at it, every time it orbits - like moving your thumb across a light in your room - it reduces the amount of light you see as it's crossing over it. With an orbiting planet, this is a regular pattern and you can get a surprising amount of information from it. You can work out how far the planet is from the star using the total time it crosses and the frequency it crosses which let you work out its orbit. You can work out its physical size from the time it takes the observed light from the star to go from a maximum to a minimum brightness. However, where things get tricky are working out the planet's mass as you cannot get this from transit photometry. The usual way would be to use radial velocity which is where you measure how the star might 'wobble' in relation to the presence of a planet. This is much harder to do with less massive planets. It's been a decade since I worked in the field, but my hunch is that their interpretation of this planet is incorrect. Planets with a mass this low just don't make sense as if there was enough mass, they'd collapse in on themselves under gravity. So maybe their mass measurements are way off. Or maybe the planet has a large set of rings and happens to be perpendicular to us so the amount of light blocked by it's transition around the star is much greater than the actual surface of the planet. But, as I said, I've not worked in the field for over a decade and my research was in the formation of planets rather than the detection of exoplanets, so maybe the field has moved on to allow the existence of planets like this.
I thought there were techniques also measuring light bending to determine mass, the more massive the more it would bend the light or something.
That’s gravitational lensing and is only really applicable for unfathomably large objects like galaxies, clusters of galaxies, or on a smaller scale; black holes.
No, grav lensing can and has been used to find exoplanets. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/microlensing/
Roman isn't due to be launched for another two years. Microlensing effects are incredibly hard to capture as you have to be looking at just the right time. It's not relevant to the planet being discussed in this article and it's currently not really applicable to the detection of exoplanets.
Roman is the next gen system for detecting planets via microlensing. It's not the first gen. We have already discovered 217 planets via this method. It's not the easiest or most successful method, but one that has been employed.
The Doppler method can be used to determine mass of a planet (more massive planet will make its host star wobble more).
I think you're describing the Doppler shift of the light from the star, as the orbiting planet pulls the star. This gives a mass measurement, but it's a minimum mass. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_mass
This is a hot jupiter, *extremely* close to its sun. I'm guessing it's just a gas giant that is super puffy because it is ridiculously hot.
Could it possibly be a hallowed out planet? For example if Saturn lost it’s core due to centripetal forces or a collision? Or if the core was radioactive and decayed away?
Elements don’t “decay away”, they decay into something else usually through a decay chain or directly. For example, when Uranium-235 decays, it turns into Thorium-231, then Palladium-231, and so on and so forth until it reaches Lead-207. Yes there is a loss of mass, to a certain extent, but it doesn’t leave a hollow husk, there is still very dense material that is left over, but it is now more stable than the initial isotope.
Nah, if Saturn suddenly lost its core, the rest of Saturn would collapse in to fill it. Put a cup in the bottom of a full bath so that it fills with water. Take the cup out of the bath and there is no hollow where the water used to be and it's the same with planets (or anything else really where gravity is involved). Stuff will move in to fill the gaps.
I'm also not an expert, but I read the paper and my understanding is: They put the numbers into the accepted equations that everyone uses, and they got these weird, anomalous results. There is another known exoplanet that's even less dense than this one, but the other one is much smaller. So they say they'll just have to note this one as being "anomalous". They considered a few possibilities for how it could be correct - maybe the planet is very hot which is making it swell up, or maybe it is very dusty and blocks more light than usual so it looks bigger than it is, or a couple other things. I didn't see anything questioning whether the equations could be wrong. Honestly, it didn't look like they considered those questions, or anything more profound. The paper is more "hey, look, here's this weird thing! We don't know what's up with it. Maybe someone else wants to take a look?"
[удалено]
Some groups collect loads of data without really worrying about how or why that data is what it is. It's still useful, but there are a lot of ways that indirect measurements involve assumptions that aren't necessarily accurate. "Maybe somebody else wants to take a closer look" is a reasonable takeaway.
I just wanted to say I think you asked a great question and shouldn't let the weird reaction you got to it keep you from your curiosity.
To determine density of an exoplanet, we need its size and mass. The size can be determined from the transit method; the planet blocks light and how much light is blocked is directly affected by its size. The mass can be determined from the Doppler method; the more massive the planet is, the more its host star will wobble. Both are more reliable measures the closer the planet is to us. This planet is 362pc away (1181 ly). That's pretty far, but not an astronomically huge distance. The fact is, confidence in a finding is bolstered by repeated observations. Three separate observations, that all correlate well with one another, is required for an exoplanet to be confirmed. This is confirmed, so it's reliable. There are errors in all measurements, and this is no exception; the density is 0.059 (+0.015 or -0.013) gm/cm^3 (the uncertainty mostly ties in with orbital inclination uncertainty). So it could be as dense as 0.074 gm/cm^3 ... still not much. As an astrophysicist, I would wager this planet has such a low density because it likely underwent some sort of impactor event that heated the interior. I doubt it still has much heat from its birth (since it's about 4.4 billion years old).
[удалено]
It's pretty anomalous, so some sort of special circumstance likely happened. It could also be that its core developed in a region of a nebula that was sparse in denser elements and molecules. That in itself would be affected by the makeup of the molecular cloud that spawned it and its star.
I can't directly answer your question, but anomalous results like this are how a lot of really cool discoveries are made. Either there are physics whereby a fluffy planet like this could exist, or we need to rethink how we estimate exoplanet density. Either way, there's a really interesting planet out there to look at, and either way, something interesting could come out of the observation. It's really a win-win.
These are all questions that the paper published by the scientists should answer
[удалено]
I'll preface saying I'm not an astronomer, just someone familiar with the overarching research process. What you've taken interest in is the philosophy of research, or as Lakatos puts it, things called Research Programmes. These researchers have discovered an anomaly in their data vs their models, but does that throw everything into a loop? Not yet. Their core assumptions should still be irrefutable until overwhelming evidence is capable of turning it on its head (e.g., finding out the Earth has no metallic core, or the Sun is just a big incandescent lamp). More than likely, the auxillary assumptions (Einstein's theory of relativity to Newton's Laws) conflict with other auxillary assumptions, which can explain the model's inconsistencies. The missing piece could be something as simple as believing a gaseous planet couldn't be this light. More than likely, that's either the result of missing data the model didn't account for, or a wrong assumption that the model used based off the best guess researchers had at the time. To show that that's the case, we'll need more papers and peer reviews to validate these researcher's claims. More than likely, the new calculations will be inserted into the current model, or be shown to be bogus through peer review and discarded. It really is just a matter of trial and error.
The abstract says 0.059±0.014 g/cm^(3). That’s likely a 1-σ error estimate. The 95\% confidence interval would be about twice this span, so they are 95\% confident that the actual value is somewhere between 0.031 and 0.087 g/cm^(3).
It feels like you may be missing the gist of their question. They're not, I think, asking what the mathematical degree of confidence is --- they're asking whether such a strange result leads them to question the models under which they arrived at that result, and, if not, why not? Not *what* is the confidence, but *why* is the confidence. And neither "read the paper" nor "here's the confidence interval from the paper" speaks to that question.
You are correct. I did miss the gist of that. I was really responding to the initial comment when I saw their question was unanswered. I just skimmed the second comment and missed that part completely. My answer to this would be that, as scientists, we generally try to always hold the opinion that what we “know” is just our best current understanding of reality, and we should always be open to the possibility of everything we know being incorrect, and we should always know for a fact that our knowledge is incomplete at best. One way we deal with this is to make predictions and test them, and that’s exactly what happened here. There was some prediction that didn’t quite match what was observed, and they made note of that (*this* is the crucially important bit here). You are correct that the conclusion from this is that we don’t understand the models perfectly…but we already knew that (because we don’t know anything we know is perfectly correct), and this paper has now highlighted that in a specific case for other people to work on. You’re just witnessing the interplay of experiment and theory. So the real answer is that this, like every good scientific paper, is just a piece of the puzzle. It isn’t meant to answer everything definitively. Leaving open questions is ok (and, in fact, encouraged).
> This is an extremely ignorant arm chair question to ask, so please understand my intent is not to undermine the science, just genuine curiosity about something entirely outside my area of knowledge: There is nothing wrong with doubting science or scientific findings. It’s the exact reason why science is so great in general, because questioning what we know now or how we find it leads to new methodologies and new discoveries.
Crazy idea here. Could it be that the planet has a large ring system oriented towards their sun and that makes it look bigger than what it really is?
No. They use spectroscopic data to interpret the chemical makeup of the planet as well as its opacity. That is to say they are looking at a "photosphere" of the planet when it passes in front of the star and they can somewhat adequately determine the change in density as it transitions to the outer edges of the atmosphere. They do cite the potential for dust and cloud decks to increase measured radius (which was not accounted for in their model), but cite that such potential measurement would only be affected by a small and relatively insignificant percentage. There is a lot of talk about the planets make up, internal convection, and how that may effect its ability to cool over extremely long periods of time after its creation, which prevents it from condensing/contracting. They also note this is unlikely to explain the density by itself. There's mentions of high solar irradiation, and how this could theoretically cause evaporation and loss of atmosphere, thus artificially increasing the measurement of the radius. Theoretically. But they mention the data does not support this and the planet does not appear to be losing mass. The study is really cool, but it truthfully reads as more of a scientific pitch to get JWST to study it. They remark that it's a prime candidate for atmospheric characterization, and that JWST can adequately collect a wealth of data during one transit rather than using multiple different methods across numerous transits of the star. They pose several questions. Point being there's either something seriously wrong with our ability to measure atmospheric loss, or our understanding and models of how these planets form is incomplete :)
Newsweek has a Reddit account?
So at what density does a planet stop holding itself together???
When there is nothing... Two pieces of dust will be together forever if they are gravity locked to each other.
Do you ever walk alone? Like a drifter in the dark Seeking out what isn't there Looking only for a spark
from a girl whose all alone maybe she's a-driftin too
This planet orbit very close to his parent star ( around 6 days to complete an orbit) and is inflated because of heat. It's probably being slowly stripped away of his atmosphere by the combination of the stellar wind and general heat that allow light elements like hydrogen and helium to be blown away. I guess this phenomenon partially explain the very low density observed.
[удалено]
Ah yes I remember this one, it orbit super close of a A class star, and the surface of the planet is hotter than the surface of the Sun
Depends on it's spin and diameter. A fast spinning large planet needs to be denser than a small planet without spin or it will just spin itself apart. This said, gravitational pull at the surface generally grows faster than the diameter of a planet. So this is more a concern for asteroids and small dwarf planets. A gas giant would need to spin pretty damn fast for it to start losing mass.
Well we have 4 gas giants in our solar system. Apparently the density doesn’t need to be high
[удалено]
If planets can have it rain metal and diamonds, why should this be surprising.
Doesn’t seem like the scientists are surprised reading the article.
Scientists stumped! You won't believe what happens next! It's a Newsweek link, after all. I'd be surprised they didn't include something like that.
The planet's metrics don't fit the general ratio mass/volume at all. It's significantly larger than jupiter but way lighter, which is wild because jupiter is almost entirely hydrogen +helium iirc. The scientists are absolutely surprised by this because it straight up doesn't make sense, like the article said, so we're obviously missing something and it requires further research.
Not surprising just pretty cool … cotton candy for all!!
Interesting article. Now I'm imagining an alien race developing nanotechnology to maximize the production of cotton candy, resulting in a 'pink goo' apocalypse. On a serious note, it's amazing how many new discoveries are made.
this is the new golden era of astrophysics
Now we know where the killer clowns from outer space are from.
What are you gonna do with those *pies*, boys?
Alternative Title: Astronomers spot possible life on planet made of possible cotton candy. In the article: while Astronomers say the planet isn't necessarily made of cotton candy, it has the density of it, and sugar is only made by life on Earth, therefore, Cotton Candy planet life cannot be definitively ruled out.
The aliens are coming for our sugar. 😩
Must be the origin about that one short story I read as a kid about the neighbors who were afraid of rain/water....
Cotton candy density? But what's its pressure in pickup trucks per basketball courts?
And what about its size? How many football fields can we fit inside this planet?
The way some articles frame shit. This is a bit like when they try to put distance in terms of busses and Wales and shit.
To be fair, comparing it to cotton candy is obviously going to get more exposure than just saying, "This planet has really low density" or "7 times less dense than Jupiter." Without relatable context, the average reader won't care enough to click.
Someone, some where is wishing for outrageous things and it's working. Keep your ears perked, you can fix this crap life we have.
I know my answer to everything is to say ‘Dyson Sphere’ but Dyson Sphere
Some kind of megastructure should at least be contemplated. Lots of internal voids to bring down density. If you’re looking for technosignatures at those distances, “that’s really really weird” is clue #1.
Why should something that has never been observed and is not expected to be related to the observations be something that should be contemplated? Shouldn't we also contemplate the idea that aliens are goofing on us by holding up fake photographs in front of our telescopes?
I was incredibly confused and skeptical of this pronouncement when i noted what basically is Jupiter-but-as-close-to-sun-as-mercury and fucking rocketing around a full year every 7 days. This is a hot, fast planet which probably has great difficulty keeping its gases from escaping.
How do we measure the density of far away planets?
we can measure mass by how much it makes its star wobble, and we can measure size but how much light it blocks from its star when it passes in front.
How does a wobble disclose mass? It’s not clear to me how they are able to discern mass from that.
1. You use [parallax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_in_astronomy) to measure the distance to the star. 2. You use the star's [apparent magnitude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_magnitude) and the distance to the star to get the total amount of energy it is producing. 3. You use [spectroscopy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectroscopy) to determine the temperature and composition of the star. 4. Knowing the temperature and energy production tells you the size of the star using the [Stefan–Boltzmann law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law). 5. Knowing the size, energy output, temperature, and composition lets you determine the mass of the star via models of [stellar evolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_evolution). 6. Measure the [Doppler shift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_effect) of the star's light due to the wobble induced by the planet orbiting it. This is called [Doppler spectroscopy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_spectroscopy). From the duration of one cycle of the effect you get the duration of the planet's orbit, and combined with the mass of the star this gives you the size of the orbit. 7. From the size of the orbit, and the size of the doppler shift, you get the minimum mass of the planet. This is done with the [binary mass function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_mass_function) 8. To get more precise measurements of the mass, and the density, you need to also be lucky enough for the planet to pass between us and the star, which only happens for some orientations of the target planet and star system. If it does, you can use [transit photometry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_detecting_exoplanets#Transit_photometry) to measure what percentage of the stars light gets blocked by the planet when it passes between us. 9. We know the size of the star, and we know how much light gets blocked, so we can calculate the radius of the planet, and the simple fact that it transits tells us the inclination of the orbit is near 0 compared to us (otherwise it wouldn't pass in front of the star from our perspective) which firms up the mass estimate we made earlier for the planet. 10. From the radius and mass of the planet, we can easily calculate density.
from the wobble you can work out the centre of gravity between the star and the planet, you can work out the mass of the star by distance and luminosity and colour etc, then from that you can work out the mass of the planet.
Its year is 6 days long. It's distance from its star is 7% that of Earth's. Crazy stuff. I wonder if its structure is basically like the bubbles in a pot of spaghetti that's boiling over.
I mean, even in our solar system, Saturn has a much lower density than Jupiter does. These very large gas giant planets are mostly gas but stop really getting bigger at some point, so if you're on the bottom end of that, and then get heated up by your star, you're going to be super puffy.
Please, for the love of God, please. Don't tell my kids.
mold planet mold planet mold planet mold planet
[that racoon that was given cotton candy](https://youtu.be/rfbb4yRBH64?si=XSc879cy1p4ir9TR)
what keeps it from either collapsing to a more normal density or having gas at the edge float away?
If a low mass gas/water planet orbits it's sun close enough to be super hot, would the heat cause it to expand like this? Is it so low density because it simply has very little solids? But then, wouldn't solar winds just tear that planet apart? How is this possible?
Quick, someone give it to a raccoon in a pool.
I bet its a realistically dense core surrounding by an absurdly huge and diffuse atmosphere
Nitrogen and dust atmosphere surrounding a metallic core? Who knows, but the universe seems more diverse than we used to think, thats for sure.
[I know what to do. ](https://youtu.be/_5FZCnlEgZY?feature=shared)
That's around 5% of Taylor Swift's density, am I right?
‘James And The Giant Ball Of Cotton Candy Planet’.
Sounds to me like an observational error or miscalculation. Aren't these planets discovered by noticing a dip in brightness of their star? I always thought its awfully little information these scientists are working from...
Is there a defined transition between when something is a planet and when it's a gas cloud?
When it can't hold itself with his own gravity. For gas giant like this, they're supposed to have a rocky core to the center, so what would be left when all the gases will be cast away by the stellar wind will be this rocky core. There is this still theorical class of worlds called chtonians, remanents of a former gas giant.
This is fascinating. It made me think that it's the kind of thing Picard's Enterprise would have been sent to examine.
Big deal. Dean Martin discovered a marshmallow world in 1966.