He continues to reveal his secrets to space scientists, sometimes coming up with the most incredible scenarios. The authors of the resource wrote about one of them science alert. They talked about an outer planet suspected of “cannibalism” – apparently eating another world.

We are talking about the hot Jupiter WASP-76b, which scientists have known for a long time. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that it is very close to the star, so the air on the exoplanet is heated to a temperature of 2000 ° C. Because of this, a huge number of various elements rise into the atmosphere, which is the reason for incredible discoveries.

Spectral analysis of the composition of the atmosphere helped to learn the secrets of hot Jupiter. Scientists have discovered 11 elements, some of which point to the gas giant’s tendency to self-destruct. WASP-76b was the first in the history of an exoplanet survey to detect vanadium oxide in its atmosphere. According to experts, this chemical element plays the role of terrestrial ozone. Besides vanadium, sodium, calcium, chromium, lithium, hydrogen, magnesium, nitrogen, manganese, potassium and barium were also found in the atmosphere.

However, what surprised scientists most was the presence of elements that shouldn’t be there. These are nickel, magnesium and chromium. As astrophysicist Mohammad Ali-Dib of the United Arab Emirates points out, this suggests that the giant planet once absorbed a smaller cosmic body with a chemical composition similar to that of Mercury long ago.