Scientists using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have observed a rare type of exoplanet, or planet outside our solar system, whose atmospheric composition
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.
by carbon, do they mean elemental carbon or organic compounds?
because the latter makes sense as an atmosphere. but how can elemental carbon be gaseous?
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.