Classroom Questions

Questions for ‘A distant crumbling planet spills its guts’ 

A bright yellow orb of an exoplanet with a dark shadowy streak running almost all the way across it

Disintegrating exoplanets, like the one in this artist’s illustration, spill their guts in a long, cometlike tail.

JPL-Caltech/NASA

By Science News Explores

To accompany ‘A distant crumbling planet spills its guts’

SCIENCE

Before Reading:

  1. Imagine you were to slice through the Earth (like an apple) and look inside. Briefly describe what you think you would see. What elements do you think Earth’s core is made of? Now, give this story about Earth’s layers a quick scan. To what extent was your original vision of Earth’s composition correct? Were you right or wrong about the likely composition of Earth’s core?
  2. Personification is a literary device that ascribes human characteristics to something non-human. Write a sentence that includes an example of personification. For example, the positive nucleus of an atoms wants to hold on to its electrons.

During Reading:

  1. What do researchers hope to learn by studying a crumbling exoplanet?
  2. How does K2 22b differ from Earth in its distance to its host star?
  3. What evidence first suggested to researchers that K2 22b may be crumbling?
  4. Why does Jason Wright describe this finding as a “gift”?
  5. What does the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) measure that allows researchers to identify minerals within the planet’s dust trail? What tool does it use to take this measurement?
  6. What conclusion did scientists draw from the finding that the dust is not composed of pure iron?
  7. Why did Nick Tusay compare the exoplanet to a snowball?
  8. Why were scientists surprised by K2 22b’s possibly icy composition?
  9. How will the planet discovered with the TESS telescope help scientists continue to answer their questions?

After Reading:

  1. Identify a sentence from this story that makes use of personification as a literary device. Writers use literary devices — such as personification — to emphasize their writing in some way. What do you think personification is meant to achieve in this article? In other words, how might this literary device improve understanding (or the experience of reading) this article for some readers?
  2. The new discovery leaves some lingering questions. Give one example of a lingering question that scientists hope to answer in the future. Describe future research that scientists want to do to better understand this topic.