Do planets inherit their chemical structure from their stars?
Far beyond the reach of any spacecraft, a distant world glows with heat so intense that rock itself turns to vapor. In that extreme environment, scientists have uncovered a rare clue about how planets are born. For the first time, astronomers have directly measured key rock-forming elements in an exoplanet’s atmosphere and found that its chemical makeup closely mirrors that of its parent star. The discovery centers on WASP-189b, a giant planet located about 320 light-years away in the constellation Libra. This world belongs to a class known as ultra-hot Jupiters, where temperatures climb high enough to vaporize elements like magnesium, silicon, and iron. Those conditions give scientists a unique opportunity to study materials that usually remain locked inside solid rock. An international team led by Jorge Antonio Sanchez, a graduate student at Arizona State University, used the Gemini South telescope in Chile to make the breakthrough observation. The findings provide the first direct evidence for a long-standing assumption in planetary science, that planets inherit their basic chemical structure from the stars they orbit. Observing …
