The Wisconsin Center for Origins Research (WiCOR) at the University of Wisconsin has two questions as part of its mission:
- How do habitable planets form?
- How does life emerge on habitable planets?
And now, the center has discovered its first exoplanet that brings up an unexpected question – Why is the newly discovered exoplanet GJ 523b a Mega-Earth rather than a gas giant like Saturn or Jupiter?
This new exoplanet, located about 87 light-years away, is 2.5 times the size of our Earth and 23 times its mass. To date, it was understood that something this large would become the core of a gas giant and not just a rocky planet like Earth. So what is the story here?
The results will appear shortly in a new paper, which will include some theories as to how this happened. You can read more about the discovery and at least one theory at the WiCOR site now.
Our Awesome Universe 