00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:04 The James Webb Space Telescope has given us
00:06 some pretty unbelievable photos, showing us
00:08 the faces of incredible objects in deep space.
00:11 However, astronomers say that for the first time,
00:14 it's now giving us an idea of what's inside
00:16 a distant and bizarre planet.
00:18 The exoplanet in question is called WASP-107b,
00:22 a planet recently described as having
00:23 the density of cotton candy.
00:25 It was believed that physicists might have to go back
00:27 to the drawing board with regards
00:29 to their planetary formation models,
00:30 as they theorized the planet had an extremely tiny core
00:33 surrounded by hydrogen and helium.
00:35 This was an affront to planetary formation models.
00:38 However, the detection of very low levels of methane
00:40 by the James Webb Telescope means
00:42 the planet is much hotter than we thought.
00:44 With the researchers writing about it,
00:46 the web data tells us that planets like WASP-107b
00:49 didn't have to form in some odd way,
00:51 with a super small core and a huge gassy envelope.
00:54 Instead, we can take something more like Neptune.
00:56 With a lot of rock and not as much gas,
00:58 we can just dial up the temperature
00:59 and poof it up to look the way WASP-107b does.
01:02 That's because methane is not stable at high temperatures.
01:05 However, they still detected other carbon-bearing molecules.
01:08 This suggests that not only is WASP-107b's interior
01:11 much hotter than they thought, but it's also much larger,
01:14 with the researchers saying it's around 12 times
01:16 the mass of Earth's core.
01:19 (upbeat music)
01:21 (upbeat music)
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