31.   They describe them as a new kind of giant planet.

32.   They think the blob might be a cloud of dust surrounding a giant planet like Jupiter.

33.   This thin atmosphere was discovered on Europa, an ice-covered moon of the giant planet Jupiter, by the Hubble Space Telescope.

34.   Today, the Science authors say, the new structure might contain millions of objects and produce the comets that pass near Jupiter and occasionally bombard the giant planet.

35.   When it looped too close to the Jovian system two years ago, the gravitational forces of the giant planet pulled the original object into unstable fragments.

36.   As it orbits Jupiter, Io intersects powerful magnetic field lines from the giant planet and acts like an enormous electrical generator.

37.   But Jupiter and Saturn have moons, so maybe the proposed giant planets around the two distant stars do, too, Williams said.

38.   Joint observations with the Cassini spacecraft could take place in December, when the Saturn-bound probe swoops past the giant planet.