this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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Astronomy

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

This tells us something remarkable and unexpected to many: Earth, the largest rocky planet in our entire Solar System, is almost as “super” as a rocky planet can get. If you managed to form an Earth-sized planet early on in your Solar System’s history, it would only need to get a little bit larger and more massive before it became capable of hanging onto volatile molecules like ammonia, methane, and even hydrogen and helium. And once you become rich in volatiles, you’re guaranteed to no longer be rocky, but rather more like Neptune, with a large gas envelope around you.

This I find very interesting. How many definetly rocky Exoplanets have we discovered so far? Or at the Exoplanets we have found so far alla gas giants?