Exoplanets

[ysabetwordsmith]

NASA’s Webb telescope just discovered one of the weirdest planets ever

A newly discovered exoplanet is rewriting the rules of what planets can be. Orbiting a city-sized neutron star, this Jupiter-mass world has a bizarre carbon-rich atmosphere filled with soot clouds and possibly diamonds at its core. Its extreme gravity stretches it into a lemon shape, and it completes a full orbit in under eight hours. Scientists are stunned — no known theory explains how such a planet could exist.


Sounds fun. Anybody want to set a story there? I miss when new scientific discoveries spawned a flood of stories.

Comments

[dewline]

2000+ lightyears away, too!

[merrileemakes]

This planet sounds mental, I love it.

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Me too. I love all the weird planets.

I feel like there should be collectibles somehow. Stuffies, pins, patches, glasses with cartoon planets, a galaxy background poster with stickers, etc.

... those probably exist in Terramagne and are trotted out as freebies every 4th of July under the "Your Tax Dollars at Work" banner.

Feel free to throw me prompts if anything appeals.

Re: Yes ...

[merrileemakes]

I can image a pretty mediocre space heist plot: a bunch of plucky scientists racing to isolate and capture a soot cloud eating bacteria to release on Earth to save the world from pollution, while Big Industry is working to blow up the entire planet to extract the diamond core that will be sold as luxury goods to the elites of earth in their floating domed sky cities (above the smog).

Hollywood ending: The plucky scientists get their bug in the nick of time and release it, early signs suggest pollution is reversing, hope is restored to an earth gasping it's dying breaths

Indie ending: Big Industry wins, blows up the planet and profits, Capitalism prevails

My favourite ending: Plucky scientists win, capture the bug and release it on Earth, soot eating bug decides other carbon based things on Earth (like buildings/tech/people) are more tasty and starts eating those. Plucky scientists should have consulted a less-plucky historian who would've told them this kind of translocation rarely ends well!