The exoplanet Smertrios has a surprising abundance of heavy elements in its atmosphere.
, scientists see a clear correlation between the planet's mass and the amount of heavy elements in the atmosphere. The more massive the planet, the lower the concentrations of these elements in its atmosphere.
"[The planet is] the mass of Saturn, but its atmosphere seems to have as much as 27 times the amount of heavy elements relative to its hydrogen and helium that we find in Saturn," study co-author Jonathan Lunine, a professor in the Physical Sciences Department at Cornell University, said in the statement.
HD149026b, or Smertrios, is a so-called hot Jupiter, a Jupiter-like planet that orbits extremely close to its parent star. In the case of Smertrios, this distance is so short that the planet's year lasts only three Earth days.
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