The new findings help paint a picture of how exotic worlds like these form and evolve, and help explain a curious gap in the size distribution of planets found around other stars. Radiation from the planets' stars is stripping away their atmospheres, driving the hot gas to escape like steam from a pot of boiling water. Now, astronomers have identified two different cases of "mini-Neptune" planets that are losing their puffy atmospheres and likely transforming into super-Earths. These include small gaseous planets called mini-Neptunes and rocky planets several times Earth's mass called super-Earths. This is further evidence for the diversity – if not unpredictability – of how planets form and evolve around other stars.Įxoplanets come in shapes and sizes that are not found in our solar system.
#Neptunes gas skin#
The planet goes onto sort of a crash-diet, losing a lot of mass until all that's left is a dense, rocky core that is still bigger than Earth and may retain a thin skin of an atmosphere.Īstronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck Observatory have identified two different cases of "mini-Neptune" planets that are losing their puffy atmospheres and possibly transforming into super-Earths. But radiation from a planet's host star heats their hydrogen/helium atmosphere which then escapes into space like a hot air balloon. Apparently, the mini-Neptunes start out as smaller, denser versions of the planet Neptune.
Toward the top of the range are the puffier so-called "mini-Neptunes," which have a fraction of the radius of the planet Neptune.Īstronomers are assembling a complex picture of how these sorts of "missing link" planets come to be. Toward the bottom of this range are dense "super-Earths" (no, not the home of the comic book hero, Superman) that are slightly bigger than Earth. It is not too big or too small but fits between the radius of Earth and the radius of Neptune. What astronomers have discovered around some other stars is a rare type of planet not found in our solar system. If our solar system were a hobbyist kit, it would come boxed up with four rocky terrestrial planets, like Earth and four gas giant planets like Jupiter. Four Successful Women Behind the Hubble Space Telescope's Achievements.Characterizing Planets Around Other Stars.Measuring the Universe's Expansion Rate.
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