04:05 PM Friday, October 20, 2023
Researchers said that the mystery of the mysterious signals emanating from the “Planet Hell”, which is located 40 light-years from Earth, can finally be solved by the James Webb Space Telescope.
A new study suggests that volcanoes on this hellish world periodically open up and release hot gas that forms an atmosphere, which then burns up and leaves the planet bald again.
The planet, which bears the scientific name 55 Cancri e, is a rocky world with a mass about 8 times our planet, and it was discovered in 2004, according to the Live Science website.
The planet is very close to its parent star, less than 2% of the distance between Earth and the Sun, making it completely orbital in just 17 hours. This creates some rather extreme conditions on the planet that defy explanation.
Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of this planet, according to a paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, is that when 55 Cancri e passes behind its star, no visible light comes from the planet itself, while at other times the planet emits a strong visible light signal. In infrared light, there is always a signal, although this signal varies in strength.
Observations of infrared light using the Spitzer Space Telescope indicated that the day side of the planet experienced exceptionally scorching temperatures of over (2,427 degrees Celsius), while the night side was cooler, but still hellish, with temperatures of about ( 1127°C).
In the new study, the authors hypothesize that the planet’s proximity to its star causes it to release gases, meaning giant volcanoes and thermal vents open up, spewing hot, carbon-rich elements into the atmosphere. But the planet cannot retain this atmosphere for long due to the intense heat, and this gas eventually volatilizes, leaving the planet empty until it starts outgassing again.
Unlike most planets, Hell’s atmosphere is unstable. The outgassing process attempts to increase the volume of the atmosphere, while the intense radiation and solar winds from the star smother it. But these two processes are not balanced, leading to the situation in which a planet sometimes has an atmosphere, and sometimes does not.
Researchers believe that this imbalance in the planet’s atmosphere could explain the strange signals. When a planet is in its atmosphere-free “bald” phase, no visible light comes from the planet’s atmosphere, because there is none to begin with, but the planet’s hot surface emits infrared light. As the atmosphere swells, both visible light and all radiation coming from the surface appear in the transit signal.
Although this is just a hypothesis, the James Webb Space Telescope has a way to test it. By measuring the pressure and temperature of a planet’s atmosphere, scientists can determine whether an atmosphere has always been present.
