En esta noticia
- What is the exoplanet that astronomers encountered during their research like?
- What is the particular feature of this exoplanet according to astronomers?
- How is it determined whether an exoplanet has an atmosphere?
- What is the importance of this discovery and how does it affect the history of our planet?
The universe still hides several mysteries that astronomical science seeks to solve with each of its investigations. One of them is the possibility of extraterrestrial life. To identify potentially habitable planets, scientists look for rocky worlds like Earth that, among other characteristics, may have an atmosphere.
Of the more than 6,300 exoplanets cataloged so far, most do not meet the condition of being rocky, and only in some were signs of an atmosphere detected.
Scientist Brandon Park Coy, from the University of Chicago, leads a research group that managed to study a particular case that could help investigate what primitive Earth was like. It is a rocky super-Earth located about 154 light-years away, in the constellation Pisces.
What is the exoplanet that astronomers encountered during their research like?
The exoplanet was named HD 3167 b. It orbits so close to its star that it completes one orbit in just one Earth day, which is why it also receives enormous amounts of radiation and has extreme temperatures.
Its equilibrium temperature is around 1,786 K, about 1,510 °C, while the temperature it would reach directly beneath the star is even higher.
The researchers classified it as a “lava world” because it receives enough radiation from its star for the silicates on its surface to melt on the day side.
What is the particular feature of this exoplanet according to astronomers?
The main feature is that there is evidence that HD 3167 b retains an atmosphere despite the extreme conditions it is subjected to. Planets located so close to their stars receive huge amounts of radiation, which in principle could facilitate the loss of their atmospheric gases.
The discovery helps define a possible transition between lava worlds that appear to be bare rocks and those capable of maintaining dense or highly reflective atmospheres.
How is it determined whether an exoplanet has an atmosphere?
During the eclipse analysis, the value turned out to be lower than would be expected from a dark rock with no atmosphere, heated to the maximum by its star.
An atmosphere can explain that cooling in two ways:
- It can transport part of the heat from the day side to the night side.
- It could contain clouds or highly reflective components that send part of the star’s radiation back into space.
The study still could not determine what that atmosphere is made of. The models consider scenarios with rock vapor mixed with volatile substances such as water, oxygen, or carbon dioxide.
What is the importance of this discovery and how does it affect the history of our planet?
The discovery is important because it allows researchers to investigate under what conditions extremely hot rocky planets can retain atmospheres.
It also provides information to study a stage that the rocky planets of the Solar System probably went through. During their formation, the primitive Earth had large amounts of molten rock and went through a magma ocean phase. In that stage, the interaction between the molten interior and the gases released by the planet was fundamental to the evolution of its first atmospheres.
These worlds function as natural laboratories to study how a magma surface exchanges materials with an atmosphere, how gases are released from the interior, and under what conditions those gases can remain around a rocky planet.
That information can help reconstruct processes that were also important during the early stages of Earth’s evolution.