2023-06-20 12:43:04
An international team of astronomers has announced that they have conducted a detailed study of a giant exoplanet hot enough for rocks to vaporize and rain molten iron. The planet WASP-76 b orbits the massive star WASP-76, which is about 634 light-years away from our planet in The direction of the constellation Pisces. WASP-76 b orbits very close to its parent star, about 12 times closer than the planet Mercury to the sun. The planet has a mass similar to that of Jupiter, but it is six times more massive. Astronomers took a deeper look at the exoplanet, where temperatures soar to around 2,400 degrees Celsius (4,350 degrees Fahrenheit), hot enough to vaporize iron. In the process, the team identified 11 chemical elements in the planet’s atmosphere and measured their abundance. It is remarkable that some of the constituent elements of the rocks discovered on this distant planet have not yet been measured in the gas giants of the solar system, Saturn and Jupiter. “There are rarely times when an exoplanet hundreds of light-years away can teach us something potentially impossible to know about our solar system,” said Stéphane Pelletier, team leader from the University of Montreal’s Trottier Institute for Exoplanet Research, in a statement. It is the case with this study.” WASP-76 b is classified as a “hot Jupiter”, when a massive planet is found incredibly close to its star. This gives WASP-76 b, which takes 1.8 Earth days to orbit its star, some other unusual properties. In a 2020 paper published in the journal Nature, astronomers suggested that there might be molten iron falling on one side of the planet, which is permanently opposite the host star, known as orbital locking or tidal restriction (with a permanent day side and a permanent night side). . This means that the perpetual night side of the planet is constantly hot, while the other (perpetual day) side is much cooler. Astronomers estimate that the temperature is more than 2,400 degrees Celsius on the day side and about 1,500 degrees Celsius on the night side. And the huge temperature difference between the two sides can lead to strong winds. These winds can reach speeds of up to 18,000 km per hour, transporting elements in the planet’s atmosphere from one side of the planet to the other. New observations allowed WASP-76 b using the MAROON-X high-resolution optical spectrometer at the Gemini Observatory (or Virgo Observatory) in Hawaii, to study the formation of “hot Jupiter” in unprecedented detail. Because of WASP-76 b’s impressive temperatures, elements that would normally be rocks on terrestrial planets like Earth, such as magnesium and iron, evaporate and accumulate as gases in the planet’s upper atmosphere. This means that the new study could give astronomers an unparalleled insight into the presence and abundance of rock-forming elements in the atmospheres of giant planets. This is not possible for cooler giant planets like Jupiter because these elements are located so low in the atmosphere that they are impossible to detect. Looking at WASP-76 b, Pelletier and his colleagues discovered that the abundances of elements such as manganese, chromium, magnesium, vanadium, barium and calcium closely matched not only their abundances in the host star WASP-76, but also the amounts in our sun. The existence of these elements is not random, as their formation is the result of a large group and billions of years of nucleosynthesis in stars. According to the University of Montreal, scientists usually measure a similar composition of elements in all stars, but the compositions of rocky planets like ours are different because they form in a slightly more complex way. The fact that this new study shows that WASP-76 b has a similar composition to its star means that its composition is also similar to a disk. The protoplanetary matter collapsed to his birth. This may be true of all giant planets. However, not everything that has been discovered about the formation of WASP-76 b has been predictable. The team discovered that some elements in Wasp-76 b’s atmosphere appeared to be “depleted.” The team interpreted this depletion as an indication that the composition of the gas giant’s upper atmosphere is sensitive to temperature. Depending on the temperature at which an element condenses, it will be present as a gas in the upper atmosphere or lost as it turns into a liquid and sinks into the lower layers of the atmosphere. The element cannot absorb light, which makes its “fingerprint” missing in the observations. The team made a discovery. Another important thing about the atmosphere of WASP-76 b, as it contains a chemical compound called vanadium oxide, and this is very important because this element can have a significant impact on hot giant planets, as it plays a similar role to ozone in the Earth’s atmosphere, and it is effective The team also found a higher abundance of nickel than expected around WASP-76 b, which could mean that at some point in its history, the giant planet swallowed a smaller, Mercury-like Earth that was rich in this element. The paper is published in Nature magazine. (Russia Today)
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