Astronomers have discovered a lemon-shaped planet that orbits a tiny star, but that’s not the only weird thing about it.
Scientists using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope discovered the Jupiter-size planet, named PSR J2322-2650b, which is the first to have an atmosphere composed of helium and molecular carbon.
“Soot clouds likely float through the air, and deep within the planet, these carbon clouds can condense and form diamonds,” NASA said in a statement.
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“The planet orbits a star that’s completely bizarre — (the star has) 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.
Researchers say the planet is one hundred times closer to its star than the Earth is to the sun, and the intense gravitational forces are what are pulling it into its bizarre, lemon-shaped form.
Music fans may know that the indie band The National wrote a song about life in Lemonworld back in 2011. Do we need to scour The National’s back catalog for further evidence of interstellar learnings? My number one candidate is The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness. Is this proof of Planet X? I say, yes.
