JAKARTA – The United States Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) is aware of the strangeness of exoplanet between Super-Earths and sub-Neptunes. A number exoplanet this is called disappearing.
So far, scientists have found 5,000 exoplanet in the solar system. However, planets with diameters 1.5 to 2 times the diameter of Earth are reduced from the number that have been discovered. This raised questions until the study was finally carried out.
From the results of research using data from the retired Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers stated that a number of exoplanet loses atmosphere and shrinks. This is thought to happen because the planet’s core pushes its atmosphere out.
“Scientist exoplanet now have enough data to say that this gap is not a coincidence. “There is something preventing the planet from reaching and/or remaining at this size,” said Science Lead Exoplanet Archive NASA Jessie Christiansen.
Christiansen stated that sub-Neptune planets that do not have enough mass and gravitational force are unable to hold their atmospheres. As a result, their size slowly shrank to the size of a Super Earth. Both will be equal.
However, Christiansen and his colleagues cannot yet confirm how many exoplanet this can lose the atmosphere. Most likely there are two mechanisms that occur, namely core-powered mass loss and photoevaporation.
According to the research results, core-powered mass can be lost because the heat radiation emitted from the hot core pushes the atmosphere away from the planet. Christiansen said that, “The radiation pushes up the atmosphere from below.”
Their results skewed towards core-powered mass loss because photoevaporation is unlikely to occur over a short period of time. It would take at least hundreds of millions of years for even less of the atmosphere to remain.
They have observed the Praesepe and Hyades star clusters that are 600 million to 800 years old, past the age of photoevaporation. As a result, the two stars in the cluster still have sub-Neptune planets and their atmospheres are thought to be intact.
Astronomers have spent more than five years solving this problem. To date, the results of their research are far from complete and they are still developing an understanding of photoevaporation and core-powered mass loss.
Tag: outer space exoplanet nasa planet saturn
2023-11-16 16:05:00
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