Webb Decoded the Weather on a Starless World 20 Light-Years Away

SIMP 0136 is a world about 13 times the mass of Jupiter, drifting alone through space 20 light-years from Earth, with a day that lasts only about 2.4 hours. It has no sun, yet it has weather. A new analysis of James Webb Space Telescope data has found that its complex atmosphere is driven mostly by just two patterns: temperature and cloud height. In this documentary we explore what SIMP 0136 is, how astronomers read the weather of a world that appears as a single pixel, the three recurring weather states the team identified, the auroras on a world with no star, and why this matters for studying planets around other stars. Sources: https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_htm... https://www.tcd.ie/news_events/articles/20... https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nas... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026... https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.16577 Chapters: 0:00 Intro 0:32 Meet SIMP 0136 1:31 Planet or Failed Star? 2:48 Weather From a Single Pixel 4:07 Webb's Three-Hour Watch 5:27 Two Hidden Patterns 6:25 Three Kinds of Weather 7:44 Auroras in the Dark 8:54 Why This Matters 9:55 The Next Forecast Footage and images: NASA, ESA and other public-domain sources. Narration voice is AI-generated; scripts are researched and written for Deep Field. #space #universe #spacedocumentary #JamesWebbSpaceTelescope #Jwst #SIMP0136