I wrote – Hadeel Al-Banna
Sunday, 02 April 2023 06:00 AM
New coverage presented by the Seventh Day TV, about the discovery by the James Webb Space Telescope of a new planet outside the solar system from the category of giant gas planets across the Milky Way galaxy and it could be completely different from those planets in our solar system.
Observations of the distant exoplanet, known as Smertrios, revealed that the planet’s atmosphere is rich in what scientists call heavy elements.
The James Webb telescope indicates that the atmosphere of “Smertrios” contains high concentrations of carbon and oxygen.
These results surprised astronomers, as in the giant gas planets in our solar system, such as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, there is a clear correlation between the mass of the planet and the amount of heavy elements in its atmosphere.
The larger the planet, the lower the concentrations of these elements in its atmosphere.
But in the case of this new planet, the issue is strange, as its size is very large, but the concentrations of heavy elements in its atmosphere are also very large.
One of the participants in the study, Jonathan Lunin, a professor in the Department of Physical Sciences at Cornell University, explained that the planet’s mass is equivalent to the mass of Saturn, but its atmosphere appears to contain up to 27 times the amount of heavy elements in relation to the hydrogen and helium found in Saturn. .
Smertrios belongs to the class of planets known as “hot Jupiters”, a Jupiter-like planet orbiting near its parent star.
Studies also said that the fact that “Smertrios” is very close to the sun, the planet’s year lasts only 3 Earth days.
As a result of this proximity to the star, temperatures in Smertrios’ atmosphere reach 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit (1,425 degrees Celsius), which is 3 times higher than the surface temperature of Venus, the hottest planet in the solar system.
However, this does not explain the unusual composition of the planet’s atmosphere.
The study also found that the planetary disk that gave rise to “Smertrios” contains a very large amount of carbon, which is much greater than the percentage of oxygen in its atmosphere, in contrast to the disk that gave birth to our solar system.
The researchers said that this diversity and difference in the quality of the atmosphere for each of the planets of the solar system and planets outside the solar system, is a fundamental puzzle in understanding the formation of planets.
Researchers are currently working on more atmospheric observations of exoplanets using the James Webb Telescope to better determine the cause of this diversity.