Jupiter-sized giant planets but lighter than cotton candy: Researchers at Oxford and Birmingham universit - The Times of India

Astronomers have just unveiled the discovery of two extraordinary 'super-puff' exoplanets, TOI-791 b and TOI-791 c, which are roughly the size of Jupiter but astonishingly lighter than cotton candy. This groundbreaking finding by an international team, including researchers from the University of Oxford and the University of Birmingham, challenges our understanding of how planets form and evolve across the cosmos. These twin giants are among the fluffiest ever found, with densities dozens of times less than Jupiter's. Published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the research highlights that these planets, orbiting an F7-type dwarf star named TOI-791 about 1,110 light-years away in the Volans constellation, are locked in a rare 5:3 mean-motion resonance, a unique gravitational dance. The discovery utilized eight years of observations from various sources, including NASA's TESS Mission and the ground-based ASTEP telescope in Antarctica, with crucial input from the Planet Hunters TESS citizen science project. Scientists are now puzzled about how such massive yet incredibly diffuse worlds come into existence, with leading theories suggesting they possess vast hydrogen- and helium-rich atmospheres that rapidly accumulated far from their host star. The team plans future observations using the powerful James Webb Space Telescope to analyze the atmospheres of TOI-791 b and TOI-791 c, searching for key elements like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. This will help shed light on their mysterious formation and evolution, offering new insights into the diverse nature of exoplanets.