/data/photo/2023/05/28/6473134b8b2ca.jpg?fit=%2C&ssl=1 "“Earth-Like Planet with Volcanoes Discovered 87 Light Years Away: LP 791-18d”")
KOMPAS.com – Astronomers have discovered an Earth-like planet 87 light years away.
Interestingly, besides being quite close, the planet is almost the same size as Earth and orbits its star at a relatively safe distance. This makes the planet’s temperature neither too hot nor too cold.
Sounds perfect as a second Earth doesn’t it?
Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Planets located outside the Solar System (exoplanets) have been pulled by the circular orbits of other planets.
As a result, the interior of the planet named LP 791-18d is likely filled with volcanoes.
“LP 791-18d is tidally locked meaning the same side is always facing its star. The day may not be too hot for liquid water on the surface. But the amount of volcanic activity we suspect is occurring across the planet could maintain an atmosphere, which allowed the water to condense. on the night side,” said Bjorn Benneke, an astronomer at the University of Montreal in Canada.
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Nevertheless, the discovery of exoplanet LP 791-18d can help astronomers better understand how habitable conditions emerged on Earth-like planets.
Exoplanet findings similar to planet Earth
Reporting from Science Alert, Saturday (27/5/2023) LP 791-18 is a red dwarf star. In 2019, astronomers discovered that there are planets orbiting the star, one of which is LP 791-18d.
Researchers then observed the star with the Spitzer Infrared Space Telescope for 127 hours and confirmed the existence of exoplanet LP 791-18d which has a radius of 1.03 times, 0.9 times the mass of Earth and orbits the star in 2.753 days.
Researchers also say that this exoplanet is closer than Earth to the Sun, but is still in the habitable zone of a star.
The habitable zone, the area where Earth-like planets are found, is the region of space at a distance from a star that theoretically allows liquid water on the surface to be neither too hot to boil nor too cold to freeze.
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But the relatively close distance of this exoplanet presents a different problem.
The exoplanet’s rotation locks it to the same period as its orbit. As a result, there is always the same side facing the star, just as one side of the Moon is always facing Earth.
In the case of planet LP 791-18d, this means that one side is always in the day and the other is in continuous night.
Meanwhile, as the planet moves closer to or farther from the star, changes in gravity stretch and compress the planet, heating it from within.
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This internal heating can manifest as volcanic activity – which can be seen as a thick atmosphere.
“In addition to potentially providing an atmosphere, the process could remove materials trapped in the Earth’s crust that are essential to life, such as carbon for example,” said Jessie Christiansen of the California Institute of Technology.
This discovery shows how complex it is to find habitable planets and the importance of studying each planetary system holistically.
But by continuing to study with the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers hope to refine their observations.
Research on the discovery of exoplanet LP 791-18d, an Earth-like planet filled with volcanoes, has also been published in the journal Nature.
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2023-05-28 13:02:00
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