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Called WASP-12b, this planet would be covered by mountains of diamonds, indicate the astronomers using NASA's Spitzer telescope for observation. This celestial body is a few thousand light years from Earth and its temperature is more than two thousand 300 degrees celsius. It is currently in the process of being devoured by its star, WASP-12. The WASP-12b is a gas giant planet that contains an extraordinary amount of carbon, which is why the first carbon-rich planet ever observed.
Astronomers believe that the WASP-12b is graphite, diamond and even exotic forms of carbon on the inside, beneath layers of gases, as explained in number 9 of this month's issue of Nature. This study provides evidence for theories that say the coal-rich rocky planets less dense than WASP-12b, may exist around other stars.
The Earth has rocks like quartz and feldspar, which are composed of silicon, oxygen and other elements. A carbon-rich world could have large amounts of rock of pure carbon, like diamond or graphite and carbon components such as tar, explained lead researcher Joseph Harrington of the University of Central Florida, Orlando. The WASP-12b is 1.4 times denser than Jupiter and is 200 thousand light years from Earth in the constellation of Auriga. The planet orbits its star in a one-day side to its star. Is so close to its star that its gravity has shaped egg mass to siphon as a thin disk. It was already known that this world was one of the hottest. Now, new observations indicate that the side that points to the star has a temperature of more than two thousand 300 degrees Celsius, more than enough to melt steel.
Carbon is a common feature of planetary systems and is a key ingredient for life on Earth. Astronomers measure the carbon-oxygen reasons to get an idea of the chemistry of a star. The carbon-oxygen ratio of the Sun is one to two, which states that is half carbon oxygen. None of the planets in our solar system has more carbon than oxygen or a ratio equal to one or greater. But the reason is unknown at Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Unlike the WASP-12b, these planets contain water (which is the largest carrier of oxygen) in the depths of their atmospheres, which makes their detection. The WASP-12b is the first planet with carbon-oxygen ratio greater than one ever measured, indicating that excess carbon has, part of which is in the form of atmospheric methane.
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