Exoplanet Discoveries: From Vaporized Rocks to Cannibalism

The ultra-hot Jupiter planet WASP-76b has a massive, hot atmosphere with temperatures averaging 2000 C and rising up to 2400 C in one hemisphere. The extreme heat vaporizes rock-forming elements like calcium, nickel, and magnesium, which float around in the thick blanket of air. Recently, astronomers used the MAROON_X high-resolution spectrogram to measure the chemistry of the planet’s atmosphere and found at least 11 rock-forming elements, including vanadium, which had never been detected on an exoplanet before. The discovery provides insights into the formation of gaseous planets around distant stars and the birth and evolutionary processes of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.