Who says you can’t lose your mood to a nearby red dwarf and then grow a new one using volcanic activity? T.are resilient planet, located at 41 light-years away from Earth, it seems to be blooming again after a rough meeting with his guest star.
Exoplanet GJ 1132 b is similar to and very different from Earth. Of course it is several times wider than our planet, but both worlds share similar densities and atmospheric pressures, and both originated about 4.5 billion years ago. And just like our planet it started hot with an atmosphere rich in hydrogen, then gradually cooled.
However, the background stories of these two planets are distinctly different.
While the Earth has always been a terrestrial, rocky world, GJ 1132 b began life as a gaseous, Neptune-like planet. But as new research shows, a nearby red dwarf destroyed its original hydrogen and helium-rich atmosphere with powerful radiation, so that GJ 1132 b, stripped to its rocky core, is now technically a terrestrial planet. The new article will appear in an upcoming issue of the Astronomical Journal, just one preprint is available on the arXiv.
The authors of the paper came to these conclusions based on direct observations of the exoplanet and theoretical models. The telescope chosen was the Hubble Space Telescope, allowing the team to discover the “secondary atmosphere,” made up of molecular hydrogen, hydrogen cyanide, methane and an aerosol haze that resembles smog on Earth.
“It’s super exciting because we believe the atmosphere we’re seeing has been regenerated, so it could be a secondary atmosphere,” Raissa Estrela, a co-author of the study and a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. in Southern California, explained in one pronunciation“We first thought that these highly irradiated planets could be pretty boring, because we thought they were losing their atmosphere. But we looked at existing observations of this planet with Hubble and said, “Oh no, there’s an atmosphere there.” ”
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In terms of a statement, the authors say that much of the planet’s current hydrogen was retained beforehand, after it was absorbed into the molten magma mantle. Volcanic processes are now causing this stored hydrogen to leak out from below, replenishing the new atmosphere, the study said.
“This process works early in a planet’s life, when the star is hotter,” said JPL scientist Mark Swain. lead author of the study, in the NASA releaseThen the star cools down and the planet just sits there. So you have this mechanism that allows you to cook for the first 100 million years of the atmosphere, and then things settle down. And if you can regenerate the atmosphere, you may be able to keep it. “
GJ 1132 b, which takes only 1.5 days to make a full orbit around its hungry host star, is likely susceptible to tidal heating, with gravitational forces turning the planet from within. The exoplanet, despite its short year, is in an elliptical orbit, resulting in an effect known as “gravitational pumps.” As the GJ 1132 b swings back and forth, it alternates between flattening and stretching, creating a motor that powers the tidal forces and, in turn, the preservation of a liquid mantle.
The surface of this exoplanet is probably not very thick, maybe just a few hundred feet deep, the authors said. The terrain is probably quite flat, with cracks caused by the tidal pumping actions, from which the hydrogen is steadily leaking out.
The new study has implications for the study of similar worlds elsewhere in the galaxy.
“The detection of an atmosphere on this rocky planet raises the possibility that the numerous powerfully irradiated super terrestrial planets, believed to be the evaporated nuclei of sub-Neptune, could harbor detectable atmospheres under favorable conditions,” the authors write in the study.
The big question now is: how often does this happen? Is this just one bizarre eventThat could be answered by the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, which, with its infrared capabilities, should be able to spot planets like this with ease. In addition, JWST could also be used to study GJ 1132 b and provide new data to confirm it Results.