A Peculiar Planet Puzzles Scientists

A planet that looks like a lemon and behaves even stranger has left scientists scratching their heads. This oddball, named PSR J2322–2650b, is not your typical planet. It's not even orbiting a normal star. Instead, it's circling a pulsar, which is the leftover core of a dead star. This pulsar is super dense, packing the mass of our sun into a tiny space, and it's blasting the planet with gamma rays. The planet is also incredibly close to its pulsar, completing a full orbit in just 7. 8 hours. That's way faster than Earth's 365-day trip around the sun. Because of this closeness, the planet is stretched into a lemon shape. It's also dealing with extreme temperatures, ranging from 650°C at night to a scorching 2, 030°C during the day.But the real head-scratcher is the planet's atmosphere. It's made up of carbon and helium, which is unusual enough. But what's really bizarre is that it's full of molecular carbon, something never seen before in any planet's atmosphere. Normally, carbon would bond with other atoms at these temperatures. The fact that it's not suggests there's almost no oxygen or nitrogen present. Scientists are stumped about how this planet formed. It didn't form like normal planets, and it's not the result of stripping a star's outer layers. The leading theory is that carbon and oxygen crystallized inside the planet as it cooled, with the pure carbon crystals rising to the top and mixing with helium. But this doesn't explain why there's no oxygen or nitrogen. The researchers are excited about this mystery. It's not every day they come across something so unusual. They're looking forward to learning more about this strange planet and its even stranger atmosphere.