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Stayts t1_is5jwon wrote

It was barium in another gas giant. Saved you a click. No alien shit here.

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Aquaticulture t1_is5lbfg wrote

This is /r/Space not /r/aliens.

Every new discovery doesn’t have to be related to aliens to not be click bait.

Although just saying “The heaviest element yet, Barium, has been detected in an exoplanet’s atmosphere.” Would have been easy enough.

This is an interesting discovery though:

> But even so, the scientists were surprised to find barium, which is 2.5 times heavier than iron, in the upper atmospheres of WASP-76 b and WASP-121 b. "Given the high gravity of the planets, we would expect heavy elements like barium to quickly fall into the lower layers of the atmosphere," explains co-author Olivier Demangeon, a researcher also from the University of Porto and IA.

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LilSpermCould t1_is5v0dw wrote

You asked a question, I just gave you my theory.

Thinking about how I parse through my feed. I realized I did the same thing you questioned.

I didn't actually take a position.

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thulesgold t1_is6co40 wrote

It's probably a byproduct of the composition of the solid core and volcanism/convection spewing the heavier elements into the gaseous layers which churn for a while.

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CostcoTPisBest t1_is9ciwo wrote

There is nothing interesting here. They got a glimpse of a spectra that showed presence of Barium, so what. Considering how exotic the planet is said to be that is of no surprise. Turbulent mixing, volcanism, composition of aelements that are stable and relatively abundant. None of this is surprising, or newsworthy.

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magnitudearhole t1_is9kdw1 wrote

Scientists: Read the composition of an atmosphere on a planet 400 ly away, honing their techniques to pull ever more detail from this glimpse of dimmed light from a world unimaginable distances away

Redditor: Nothing interesting

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