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LiveScience
LiveScience
Elizabeth Howell

'What the heck is this?' James Webb telescope spots inexplicable planet with diamonds and soot in its atmosphere

An artist's concept of the exoplanet PSR J2322-2650b (at left) orbiting a pulsar (right).

A distant exoplanet appears to sport a sooty atmosphere that is confusing the scientists who recently spotted it.

The Jupiter-size world, detected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), doesn't have the familiar helium-hydrogen combination we are used to in atmospheres from our solar system, nor other common molecules, like water, methane or carbon dioxide.

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