Ahelium planet is a planet with ahelium-dominated atmosphere. This contrasts with ordinarygas giants such asJupiter andSaturn, whose atmospheres consist primarily ofhydrogen, with helium as a secondary component only. Helium planets might form in a variety of ways.Gliese 436 b is a possible helium planet.
There are several hypotheses for how a helium planet might form.
A helium planet might form via hydrogen evaporation from agaseous planet orbiting close to a star. The star will drive off lighter gases more effectively through evaporation than heavier gasses, and over time deplete the hydrogen, leaving a greater proportion of helium behind.[1]
A scenario for forming helium planets from regulargiant planets involves anice giant, in an orbit so close to its host star that thehydrogen effectively boils out of the atmosphere, evaporating from and escaping the gravitational hold of the planet. The planet's atmosphere will experience a large energy input and because light gases are more readily evaporated than heavier gases, the proportion of helium will steadily increase in the remaining atmosphere. Such a process will take some time to stabilize and completely drive out all the hydrogen, perhaps on the order of 10 billion years, depending on the precise physical conditions and the nature of the planet and the star.Hot Neptunes are candidates for such a scenario.
The loss of hydrogen also leads to a depletion ofmethane in the atmosphere. On ice giants, methane naturally forms a cycle of melting, evaporation, breakdown and subsequent recombination and condensation. But as hydrogen gets depleted, a fraction of the carbon atoms will not be able to recombine with free hydrogen in the atmosphere and over time this will lead to an overall loss of methane. With time, the methane in the atmospheres of hot ice giants will also get depleted.[1]
A helium-rich planetary object may also form from a low-masswhite dwarf, which gets depleted of hydrogen via mass transfer in a close binary system with a second, massive object like aneutron star.
One scenario involves anAM CVn type of symbiotic binary star composed of two helium-core white dwarfs surrounded by a circumbinary helium accretion disk formed during mass transfer from the less massive to the more massive white dwarf. After it loses most of its mass, the less massive white dwarf may approach planetary mass.[2]
Helium planets are expected to be distinguishable from regular hydrogen-dominated planets by strong evidence ofcarbon monoxide andcarbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Due to hydrogen depletion, the expectedmethane in the atmosphere cannot form because there is no hydrogen for the carbon to combine with, hence carbon combines with oxygen instead, forming CO and CO2. Due to the atmospheric composition, helium planets are expected to be white or grey in appearance.[1] Such a signature can be found in Gliese 436 b, which has a predominance of carbon monoxide, and is hypothesized to be a helium planet.[1]
