Hannah Devlin, The Guradian
Nasa’s James Webb space telescope has revealed a planet where specks of sand fall as rain, in groundbreaking observations.
The planet, Wasp-107b … is very large but very light, earning it the nickname the “candy floss” planet… a strange and exotic world beyond our solar system that features silicate sand clouds and rain, scorching temperatures, raging winds and the distinct burnt-matches scent of sulphur dioxide...
Wasp-107b is similar in mass to Neptune but almost the size of Jupiter, and its vast, diffuse nature allows the James Webb telescope to peer deep into its atmosphere.
'It’s a great target… one of the fluffiest planets out there' said Dr Joanna Barstow, a planetary scientist at Open University
The latest observations, published in Nature, reveal …. something akin to Earth’s water cycle, but instead with sand cycling between solid and gaseous states.
From the hotter, lower levels of the atmosphere, with temperatures close to 1,000C, silicate vapour would rise up, cool and form microscopic grains of sand, too small to see. Eventually, these clouds of sand dust would become dense enough that they begin to rain back down to the lower layers of the atmosphere. Below a certain level, the sand would sublime back into vapour, completing the cycle.
“The clouds would be like a hazy dust,” said Decin. “And these sand particles are streaming around at extremely high velocity. A few kilometres per second.”
