The planet orbits a star that's completely bizarre — the mass of the Sun, but the size of a city,” said the University of Chicago’s Michael Zhang, the principal investigator on this study. “This is a new type of planet atmosphere that nobody has ever seen before. Instead of finding the normal molecules we expect to see on an exoplanet — like water, methane, and carbon dioxide — we saw molecular carbon, specifically C3 and C2.”

Molecular carbon is very unusual because at these temperatures, if there are any other types of atoms in the atmosphere, carbon will bind to them. (Temperatures on the planet range from 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit at the coldest points of the night side to 3,700 degrees Fahrenheit at the hottest points of the day side.) Molecular carbon is only dominant if there's almost no oxygen or nitrogen. Out of the approximately 150 planets that astronomers have studied inside and outside the solar system, no others have any detectable molecular carbon.

Pretty much any element can enter a gaseous state under the right conditions. It hot AF in there and the carbon has nothing to react with since the only other predominant element is Helium which is about as unreactive as you're gonna get.

[–] IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (2 children)

follow up question. light gasses tend to abandon the atmosphere first,. unless it's a cold planet or it hasna strong gravity. wouldn't the conditions for helium to remain in the atmosphere be mutually exclusive with those extreme conditions to have carbon in the atmosphere?

[–] mysticpickle@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Gravitational forces from the much heavier pulsar are pulling the Jupiter-mass planet into a bizarre lemon shape.

A Jupiter-mass planet is considered pretty damn big with an incredibly strong gravitational field. Planets that are about 13 times bigger than Jupiter are considered brown dwarves which are just a few steps away from being full on stars.

[–] IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

I'm not going to look at the temperatures and escape velocities of gasses. just that helium atmosphere and carbon atmosphere are on the polar opposite of atmospheres. maybe there's something exotic going on (not magic), like a cold (ish, it's a heavy planet, I mean not extrememly hot) helium atmosphere with a ring of carbon dust affecting the spectrometry.

I'm not doubting the discovery. I'm assuming it's spectrography and it is true, it's just crazy how insane the universe is. whenever I assume nothing new will surprise me, we find out something new.