In a groundbreaking discovery, astronomers have identified an exoplanet unlike any other in our known universe. Dubbed “Cotton Candy” due to its ethereal appearance, this celestial body has left scientists baffled and intrigued.

Located in the Kepler-47-star system, approximately 1,200 light-years away from Earth, Cotton Candy orbits a binary star—a pair of stars that orbit each other. Its most remarkable feature is its unusually low density, which has led astronomers to describe it as the fluffiest exoplanet ever detected.

Cotton Candy’s density is so low that it defies our current understanding of planetary formation. According to Dr. Elena Rodriguez, lead researcher at the Galactic Exoplanet Institute, “We cannot explain how this planet formed.” The prevailing theories about planet formation involve the accumulation of dust and gas in a protoplanetary disk, eventually coalescing into a solid body. However, Cotton Candy’s density challenges this model.

A “Little Earth Experiment” inside a giant magnet sheds light on so-far-unexplained flow patterns in Earth’s interior.

Earth’s inner core is a hot, solid ball—about 20% of Earth’s radius—made of an iron alloy. The planet’s outer core, beneath the rocky mantle, is a colder, liquid metal. Geophysics models explain that, since the movement of a liquid metal induces electrical currents, and currents induce a magnetic field, convection and rotation produce our planet’s magnetic fields. But these models typically neglect an important contribution: how Earth’s magnetic field influences the very flows that generate it. Alban Pothérat of Coventry University, UK, and collaborators have now developed a theory that accounts for such feedback and vetted it using a lab-based “Little Earth Experiment” [1]. Their results inform a model pinpointing processes that might explain the discrepancies between theoretical predictions and satellite observations of Earth, opening new perspectives on the study of geophysical flows.

Understanding flows in planetary interiors is a long-standing challenge. “If you don’t account for the fact that the magnetic field itself changes the flow, then you won’t get the right flow,” says Pothérat. Indeed, both satellite data from the European Space Agency’s Swarm mission and state-of-the-art numerical simulations indicate certain circulating core flows where liquid produced at the boundary of the inner core is fed into the outer core, moves upward toward the poles, and from there finally flows back inward (Fig. 1).

Around 2.2 billion years ago, a massive space rock collided against our planet, leaving a massive scar.

Around 200 million years older than any other site like it on the planet’s surface, the so-called Yarrabubba impact structure is located in Australia.

Although the impact site is the oldest found to date, finding it was not easy.

A Chinese rover has found new evidence to support the theory that Mars was once home to a vast ocean, including tracing some ancient coastline where water may once have lapped, a study said Thursday.

J1407b, has the largest ring system yet seen – around 200 times larger than Jupiter’s (the largest in our solar system). Its host planet is likewise massive: we don’t know whether it’s a gas giant or a brown dwarf. So far, it’s been classified as a super-Jupiter stellar body.

This is an updated (quotes and sources) version of the previous article.

New research in our Milky Way has revealed a neutron star that rotates around its axis at an extremely high speed. It spins 716 times per second, making it one of the fastest-spinning objects ever observed. Photo: NASA.