Posted by Heba El-Sayed
Friday, May 19, 2023 01:00 AM
Astronomers have discovered a planet they believe is full of active volcanoes. In a study published in the journal Nature, a multinational team of scientists said they have discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet that they believe may have water on part of its surface.
Boring LP 791-18 d (unfortunately, no one thought to call it Mustafar) lies about 90 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Crater.
LP 791-18 d orbits a red dwarf that is tially bound, which means the planet does not have a day-night cycle like Earth, according to Engadget.
Instead one part of the LP 791-18 d is constantly burned by sunlight, while the other part is always in darkness.
“The daytime side is probably too hot to have liquid water on the surface,” Bjorn Beneke, one of the astronomers who has studied the planet, told NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Atmosphere Which may allow water to condense on the night side.
The LP 791-18 system contains at least two other planets, called LP 791-18 b and c, the latter two and a half times more massive than Earth and more than seven times as massive.
It also affects LP 791-18 d’s orbit, causing it to travel along an elliptical path around the system’s sun. This path means that LP 791-18 d deforms each time it completes an orbit. According to NASA: “These deformations can create enough internal friction to greatly heat the planet’s interior and produce volcanic activity on its surface.”
Study co-author Jessie Christiansen said: “The big question in Astrobiology“The field that is most widely studied about the origins of life on Earth and beyond is whether tectonic or volcanic activity is necessary for life.”
“In addition to potentially providing an atmosphere, these processes could yield materials that would otherwise sink and get stuck in the crust, including those we think are important to life such as carbon.”
