A planet was found to transit its star and found to have a size 60 percent larger diameter but weighed the same as Earth. This suggests that it's atmosphere is thicker, and it is a more gaseous planet. This is a great discovery because it supports the idea that there is no clear line between gas planets and rocky planets when it comes to size. The team of international astronomers that found the planet gave light into its characteristics using NASA's Kepler telescope. They found that it's denser than water by thirty percent, orbiting a red dwarf star. This suggests that the planet is enveloped by hydrogen and helium hundreds of miles thick. To weigh KOI-314c, they used a different method that usually implemented on exoplanets. Instead of of finding out the wobbles of the star once a planet transits it, to then extrapolate the mass to see what forces causes the wobbling, they used TTV. Transit timing variations. Essentially it can only be used when a star has more than one planet orbiting it, and astronomers see what occurs to the star when they both transit the star and their respective times time and time again, and see the intricate dance of wobbling that gives away their masses. This can lead to other questions as well. Is there a critical size in which rocky planets are preferred in planetary evolution, or does the dependence of whether it will be a gassy planet or rocky has something do other than size? Distance? The composition of stellar dust and its properties?
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