NASA’s TESS Spots Two Jupiter-Sized Planets Lighter Than Cotton Candy
SMRTR summary
Cotton candy planets sound like something out of a children's book. But astronomers have confirmed two real worlds so impossibly light that their densities rival the spun sugar treat.
Orbiting a sun-like star called TOI-791, about 1,113 light years away, these planets are roughly Jupiter's size but contain just three to six percent of its mass. NASA's planet-hunting satellite TESS spent more than 1,100 days gathering data to confirm them.
What makes the discovery especially striking is finding two of these "super-puffy" planets in the same system. Lead researcher George Dransfield of Oxford University notes only a handful of such worlds are known to exist anywhere.
Scientists say existing models of giant planet formation simply didn't account for objects this large with so little mass. The James Webb Space Telescope may soon peer into their bloated atmospheres, potentially revealing what keeps these fragile, improbable worlds from simply... drifting apart.
SMRTR provides this summary for quick context. The original article belongs to TechEBlog.
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