Scientists Find A Surprise Ingredient In Exoplanet Cake Mix ⁘ Sulfur Dioxide

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A 'hot Neptune' exoplanet has been found to contain sulfur dioxide in its atmosphere ⁘ an atmosphere that's also gushing into space as the planet loops over its star's poles on a steeply inclined orbit every three-and-a-third days.

The existence of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere of the exoplanet, dubbed GJ 3470b and located 96 light-years from Earth , came as a shock when it was spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

"We didn't think we'd see sulfur dioxide on planets this small, and it's exciting to see this new molecule in a place we didn't expect, since it gives us a new way to figure out how these planets formed," sThomas Beatty of the University of Wisconsin, Madison said in a statement . "And small planets are especially interesting, because their compositions are really dependent on how the planet-formation process happened."

With a mass 13.9 times greater than Earth's mass , and a diameter about 40% that of Jupiter , GJ 3470b is a bloated gas bag. When such worlds are close to their star, astronomers call them 'hot Neptunes." GJ 3470b has an atmospheric temperature of 325 degrees Celsius (617 degrees Fahrenheit); the temperature of Neptune in our solar system is ⁘200 degrees Celsius (⁘330 degrees Fahrenheit).

Present models of planet formation describe how gas giants typically form farther out from their star than rocky planets , in the cold depths where gas is more plentiful. Yet, GJ 3470b orbits at a distance of just 5.3 million kilometers (3.3 million miles) from its star. For comparison, Mercury, the closest planet to our sun , orbits at an average distance of 58 million kilometers (36 million miles) from our star, although red dwarf systems are usually scaled down compared to our solar system.

Ordinarily, we would expect GJ 3470b to have formed farther out and then migrated inward as a result of interactions with its star's planet-forming disk. Meanwhile, scientists would normally suspect the world would've been shoved out of the orbital plane via a gravitational interaction with another planet, or perhaps even upheaval caused by a close-passing star.