www.universetoday.com/145242/are-low-density-cotton-candy-exoplanets-actually-just-regular-planets-with-rings/#more-145242Posted on March 4, 2020 by Evan Gough
Are Low Density “Cotton Candy” Exoplanets Actually Just Regular Planets With Rings?
There’s a type of exoplanet that astronomers sometimes refer to as cotton candy planets, or super-puffs. They’re mysterious, because their masses don’t match up with their extremely large radii. The two characteristics imply a planet with an extremely low density.
In our Solar System, there’s nothing like them, and finding them in distant solar systems has been puzzling. Now a pair of astronomers might have figured it out.
The astronomers are Anthony Piro of Carnegie University and Shreyas Vissapragada, at Caltech. Their paper is titled “Exploring Whether Super-puffs can be Explained as Ringed Exoplanets.” It’s published in The Astronomical Journal.