Imagine a planet the size of Jupiter…
that weighs less than the cotton candy at your local fair.
Not a metaphor. Actual physics.
Scientists just found two of them. Orbiting the same star.
1,110 light-years away, in a tiny southern constellation called Volans.
Two giant gas worlds. Same star system. Same cosmic nursery.
And densities so absurd they break your intuition for what a planet even is.
In other words: if you could find a bathtub big enough… they'd float.
Not a billion-dollar observatory.
Not a famous professor.
Regular volunteers.
They were scrolling through NASA's TESS telescope data on the Planet Hunters project — hunting for tiny dips in starlight that hint at a planet crossing in front of its sun.
First flag: 2019.
Second flag: 2023.
Confirmed now: 2026.
Professional astronomers from Oxford, Birmingham, and the Université Côte d'Azur then took over — even pointing a telescope from deep inside Antarctica at the system, using the continent's endless polar nights to nail the measurements.
Lead author Dr. George Dransfield put it simply: only a handful of super-puffs are known at all.
Finding two siblings around the same star?
That's almost unheard of.
Her favourite comparison wasn't even candy floss.
It was "a fresh blob of shaving foam straight out of the can." 🫧
Both planets formed from the same disc of gas and dust around their young star.
Same ingredients. Same kitchen. Same recipe.
So here's the question that's keeping astronomers up at night:
Why do some giants compress into dense, heavy worlds like Jupiter…
while others stay impossibly fluffy for billions of years?
Nobody knows yet.
But the TOI-791 system just became what Professor Amaury Triaud called "a unique laboratory" for figuring it out.
The universe keeps reminding us:
our rules aren't the rules.
Out there in Volans, two enormous worlds are drifting through space — bigger than anything in our solar system, lighter than the snack in a child's hand.
And we're only just beginning to understand how that's even possible.
That's all for now!
