Right in our , about 210 light years away, is a planet beyond our solar system that defied scientific explanation for years. Its name is WASP 107b. Now, two different teams of think they've found the solution, but it's launched a series of new questions that will require further research.
WASP 107b: The exoplanet that shouldn't exist Astronomers first detected this in 2017. Their initial observations suggested WASP 107b was about as wide as in size, but is 10 times less massive, earning it the nickname "super-puff," like a puffy marshmallow or fluffy cotton candy. For years, experts struggled to understand how such a planet could grow so big in diameter but remain so light in mass.
As far as were concerned, the exoplanet shouldn't exist. "People started to bend over backwards to try to figure out how to make such a planet," David Sing, a Bloomberg distinguished professor at Johns Hopkins University, told Business Insider. Typically, planets grow wider just like humans.
The more — and more massive — they get. Therefore, if this exoplanet was as big as astronomers observed, then it shouldn't have been so low in mass. "WASP 107b is an outlier among the outliers," said Luis Welbanks, a NASA Sagan postdoctoral fellow at Arizona State University.
Now, thanks to the , two separate research teams — one led by Sing and another by Welbanks — think they've finally cracked the case. What's more, both teams came to remarkably similar conclusions, bolstering each other's findings. .