Astronomers have found a planet orbiting a dead sun with a never-before seen atmosphere, and it’s shaped like a lemon.
The exoplanet, dubbed PSR J2322-2650 b, has a helium-and-carbon atmosphere, something researchers say they’ve never seen before. The air could be full of soot clouds, and deep inside, carbon could even clump together into solid crystals, possibly forming diamonds.
A giant planet as heavy as Jupiter with a carbon-heavy atmosphere, orbiting a dead star, does not fit any known planet model, challenging long-standing ideas about how worlds form and survive. The findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, suggest that planetary systems can exist under far more extreme conditions than scientists thought.
The new research revealed that powerful gravity from its nearby star, which lies about 750 light-years away from Earth, stretches and squeezes the planet into a lemon shape.
